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Authors at Home 



PERSONAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF 
WELL-KNOWN AMERICAN WRITERS 



v^."- V. 



EDITED BY 

J. L. & T. B. GILDER 



" -1 •l.j »■)>© 






NEW YORK 

A. WESSELS COMPANY 
1902 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

•"--o CoWfab REOBiveo 

OCT. ^^ "^902 

On^mmMT ftrnrv 

rAftS C^ XXa No, 
0C3PY B. 



'.0 0*?^ 



Copyright, 1889, 

BY 
O. M. DUNHAM. 



Copyright, 1902, 

BY 

A. WESSELS COMPANY. 



EDITOR'S NOTE 



The sketches of authors at home in this book 
have as their special value the fact that the writer 
of each article was selected for the purpose by the 
author himself. The sketches appeared from time 
to time in TJic Critic, where they attracted partic- 
ular attention by virtue of their authenticity, as 
well as for the names of the subjects and the writ- 
ers. 

The Canadian border has been crossed in the 
article on Prof. Goldwin Smith ; but with this ex- 
ception the series treats only of native American 
writers who make their home on this side of the 
Atlantic. Since these sketches were written, 
some of the most distinguished of the authors in 
the list have died, all of them meeting natural 
deaths, with one exception, Mr. Paul Leicester 
Ford. J. L. G. 

New York, June, igo2. 



CONTENTS 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 
George Bancroft. 
George H. Boker, 
John Burroughs. 
George W. Cable. 
S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain) 
George William Curtis. . 
Dr. Edward Egglestop^. . 
Edward Everett Hale. . 
Joel Chandler Harris. . 
Prof. J. A. Harrison. 
Col. John Hay. . -r 
Col. T. W. Higginson. 
Dr. O. W. Holmes. 
Julia Ward Howe. . ' . 
William Dean Howells. . 
Charles Godfrey Leland. 
James Russell Lowell. . 
Donald G. Mitchell (Ik 

Marvel) 

Francis Parkman. 
Prof. Goldwin Smith. 
Edmund Clarence Stedman. 
Richard Hknry Stoddard. 
Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
Charles Dudley Warner. 
Walt Whitman. . 
John Greenleaf Whittier. 
Mrs. Margaret Deland. . 
F. Marion Crawford. 
Paul Leicester Ford. 



By William H. Bishop. 
B. G. Lovejoy. , 
George P. Latlirop. 
Roger Riordan. 
J. K. Wetherill. 
Chas. Hopkins Clark. 
George P. Lathrop. . 
O. C. Auringer. 
William Sloane Kennedy 
Erastus Brainerd. . 
W. M. Baskervill. . 
B. G. Lovejoy. . 
George Willis Cooke. 
Alice Wellington Rollins. 
Maude Howe. 
Williatn H. Bishop. 
Elizabeth Robins Pennell. 
George E. Woodberry. 

Henry H. Beers. 
Charles H. Farnham. 
Charles G. D. Roberts. 
Anna Bowman Dodd. 
Joseph B. Gilder. 
Rev. Joseph H. Twichell 
Rev. Joseph H. Twichell 
George Seluuyn. 
Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
Lucia Purdy. 
William Bond. 
Lindsay Swift. . 



17 
29 

39 
49 
61 

73 
83 
97 
III 
125 
135 
M7 
163 
181 
193 

211 
227 

237 
253 
263 

273 
291 

313 
323 

333 
343 
355 
369 
385 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

ON BEACON HILL, AND ROUND IT. 

Beacon Hill is the great pyramid, or horn of 
dominion, as it were, of Boston's most solid re- 
spectability of the older sort. Half-way up Beacon 
Hill, Aldrich is to be met with at the ofifice of 
The Atlantic Monthly, of which he has been the 
editor since 1881. The publishers of this mag- 
azine have established its headquarters, together 
with their general business, in the old Quincy 
mansion, at No. 4 Park Street, which they have 
had pleasantly remodeled for their purposes. 
Close by, on the steep slope, is the Union Club; 
across the street the long, shaded stretch of Boston 
Common ; and above it is the State House, pre- 
siding over the quarter, with its imposing golden 
dome half hidden amid the greenery. The editor's 
ofifice is secluded, small, neat, and looks down into 
a quiet old graveyard, like those of St. Paul's and 
Trinity in New York. It seems a place strictly 
adapted to business, and is cut off from the outer 
world even by so much of a means of communi- 
cation as a speaking-tube. There was formerly a 
speaking-tube, but an importunate visitor had his 

3 



4 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

ear to it, and received a somewhat hasty message 
intended only in confidence for the call-boy, and 
it was abolished. " Imagine the feelings of a sen- 
sitive man — my feelings, of course — on such an 
occasion," says the editor with characteristic 
drollery. " I flew at the tube, plugged it up with 
a cork, and drove that in with a poker ! " Among 
the few small objects that can be called ornament 
scattered about is remarked a photograph of a 
severely classic doorway, which might have be- 
longed to some famous monument of antiquity. 
It has a funereal look, to tell the truth, but it 
proves to be nothing less than the doorway of the 
residence of Thomas Bailey Aldrich himself, in 
Mt. Vernon Street. Like one of his own para- 
doxes, it has a very different aspect when put 
amid its proper surroundings. 

Mt. Vernon Street crosses the topmost height 
of Beacon Hill. Parallel to the famed thor- 
oughfare of Beacon Street, it is like a more 
retired military line that has the compensation 
for its retirement of being spared the active 
brunt of service. A very few minutes' climb 
from the office of The Atlantic Monthly suf- 
fices to reach it. Precisely at that portion of it 
where the pretty grass-plots begin, to the houses 
on the upper side, is the attractive, stately man- 
sion of an elder generation, in which Aldrich has 
taken up his abode. He bought it, some years 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 5 

ago, of Dr. Bigelow, a well-known name in Boston, 
and made it his own. It is one of a block, and is 
of red brick, four windows (and perhaps thirty 
feet) wide, and four tall stories in height, with a 
story of dormers above that. The classic door- 
way of white marble, solidly built, after the honest 
fashion of its time, is but a small detail after all 
in such an amplitude of fagade, and melts easily 
into place as part of a genial whole. The quarter, 
its sidewalks and all, is chiefly of old red brick, 
tempered with the green of grass-plots, shrubs, and 
climbing vines. It has a pervading air of anti- 
quity, and it quaintly suggests a bit of Chester or 
Coventry. The neighbors are, on the one hand, 
Charles Francis Adams ; on the other, Bancroft, 
son of the historian ; while, diagonally across the 
way, is a lady who is, by popular rumor, the 
richest woman in New England. The rooms of 
the house take a pleasing irregularity from the 
partial curvature of the walls, front and rear. 
They are all spacious, above-stairs as well as 
below. The " hall bedroom," of modern progress, 
was hardly invented in its time. A platform and 
steps at one side of the hall, on entering (they 
clear a small alley to the rear) have a sort of altar- 
like aspect. The owner or his books might some 
time be apotheosized there, at need, amid candles 
and flowers. Aldrich has been fortunate in his 
marriage as in so many other ways. His family 



6 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH, 

consists of a congenial and accomplished wife, 
and " the twins," not unknown to literature. The 
most pervading trait of the interior is a sense of 
a discriminating judgment and ardor in household 
decoration. Both husband and wife share this 
taste, and together they have filled this abode and 
their two country houses with ample evidence of 
it, and with rare and taking objects brought from 
a wide circle of travel and research. Tribute 
should be paid to the quietness of tone, the air 
of comfort, in the whole. The collections are not 
made an end in themselves, but are parts of a 
harmonious interior. Several stories are carpeted 
alike, in a soft, low-toned hue. In days of pro- 
fessional decorators who throw together all the 
hues of the kaleidoscope, and none in a patch 
larger than your hand, and held upon these, brass, 
ebony, stamped leather, marquetry, enamels and 
bottle-glass, in a kind of chaotic pudding — in these 
days such an exceptional reserve as is here mani- 
fest seems little less than a matter of notable per- 
sonal daring. The furniture is of the Colonial 
time, with a touch of the First Empire, and each 
piece has its own history. There is a collection 
of curious old mirrors. In a variety of old glazed 
closets and pantries in the dining-room (behind a 
fine reception-room, on the entrance floor), Mrs. 
Aldrich shows a rare collection of lovely china, 
both for use and ornament. 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 7 

This is a dining-room that has entertained many 
a distinguished guest ; and the little dinners, to 
which invitations are rarely refused by the favored 
ones, are said to be almost as easy to give as en- 
joyable to take part in. The agreeable host, who 
has always allied himself much with artists, has 
on occasion dined the New York Tile Club. 
Again, his occupation as editor of The Atlantic 
makes it often his duty or privilege to bring home 
strangers of note who drop down upon him from 
afar. The unexpected is, indeed, one of the things 
consistently to be looked for in Aldrich. On 
the evenings of the week when he is not en- 
tertaining, he is very apt to be dining out him- 
self. He is a social genius, and understands the 
arts of good fellowship. Good things abound 
even more, if possible, in his talk than in his 
writings. Every acquaintance of his will give 
you a list of happy scintillations of his wit 
and humor. There is nothing of the recluse 
by nature in Aldrich; nothing, either, of the 
conventional cut of poet or sage in his aspect. 
His looks might somewhat astonish those — as the 
guileless are so often astonished in this way — who 
had preconceived ideas of him from the delicate 
refinement, the exquisite perfection of finish, of 
his verse. As I saw him come in the other day 
from Lynn in a heavy, serviceable reefing-jacket, 
adapted to the variable summer climate of that 



8 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

point, he had much more the air of athlete than 
poet. I shall not enter upon the abstruse cal- 
culation of what age a man may now have who 
was born in 1837, but in looks, manners, habits, 
Aldrich distinctly belongs to the school of the 
younger men. He is now somewhat thickset ; he 
is blond, and of middle height. He has features 
that lend themselves easily to the humorous 
play of his fancy. The ends of his mustache, 
pointed somewhat in the French manner, seem 
to accentuate with a certain fitness and chic the 
quips and cranks which so often issue from be- 
neath it. Mentally, Aldrich seems Yankee, crossed 
with the Frenchman. In the matter of literary 
finish, he is refined by fastidiousness of taste to 
the last degree. He is a man of strong likes and 
dislikes ; it would sometimes seem fair almost to 
call them prejudices. In his work he has scarcely 
any morbid side. He is the celebrator of every- 
thing bright and charming, of things opalescent 
and rainbow-hued, of pretty women, roses, jewels, 
humming-bird and oriole, of the blue sky and sea 
and the daintiest romance of the daintiest spots 
of foreign climes. If man invented the arts to 
please, — as can hardly be denied, — few can be 
called more truly in the vein of art than Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich. 

From the rear window of the dining-room one 
looks out into a little court-yard, more like a bit 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 9 

of Chester than ever. The building lot runs quite 
through to Pinckney Street, and is closed in on 
the further side by an odd little house of red 
brick, which is rented as a bachelor apartment. 
It was formerly a petty shop, until Aldrich be- 
thought him both to transform it thus into a de- 
sirable adjunct, and to make it pay a considerable 
part of the taxes. It is like a dwelling out of a 
pantomime. One would hardly be surprised to 
see Humpty Dumpty dive into or out of it at any 
moment. Pinckney Street might have a chapter 
to itself. Narrower, modester, and at a further 
remove still from the front than Mt. Vernon 
Street, it begins to be invaded now by quiet 
lodging-houses, but still retains its quaintness 
and a high order of respectability. A bright 
glimpse of the sea is had at the end of its con- 
tracted down-hill perspective, over Charles Street. 
Aldrich formerly lived in Pinckney Street, then 
in Charles Street, and thence removed to his pres- 
ent abode. But, if it be a question of view, we 
must ascend rather the high, winding staircase to 
the large cupola, with railed-in platform, set upon 
the steep roof. The ground falls away hence on 
every side and all of undulating, much-varied Bos- 
ton is visible. Mark Twain has pronounced the 
prospect from here at night, with the electric 
lights glimmering in the leafy Common and the 
myriad of others round about, as one of the most 



lo THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

impressive within his wide experience. The 
golden dome of the State House rears its bulk 
aloft, close at hand. Up one flight from the en- 
trance are the two principal drawing-rooms of the 
house, large and handsome. The most conspic- 
uous objects on the walls of these are a few un- 
known old masters after the style of Fra Angelico 
— trophies of travel. There are also a remarkable 
pair of figures in Venetian wood-carving, nearly 
life-size. The pictures are, for the rest, chiefly 
original sketches done for illustration of the 
author's books by the talented younger American 
artists. 

On the same floor is the library, a modest-sized 
room, made to seem smaller than it is through 
being compactly filled from floor to ceiling with a 
collection of three thousand books. The special- 
ties chiefly observed in its composition are Amer- 
icana and first editions. Aldrich would disclaim 
any very ambitious design, but there are volumes 
here which might tempt- the cupidity of the most 
finished book-fancier, and of a kind that bring 
liberal sums in market. Something artistic in the 
form has generally guided the choice, as for in- 
stance Voltaire's ** La Pucelle," and the "■ Contes 
Moraux " of Marmontel, containing all the quaint 
early plates. You take down from the shelves ex- 
amples of Aldrich's own works done into several 
languages. Here is his *' Queen of Sheba " in 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. ii 

Spanish, Valencia, 1879. Here is the treasure 
which perhaps he would hardly exchange against 
any other — the autograph letter of Hawthorne 
warmly praising his early poems, — saying, among 
other things, that some of them seem almost too 
delicate even to be breathed upon. Never did a 
young writer receive more intelligent and sympa- 
thetic recognition from a greater source. Among 
the curiosities of the shelves in yet another way is 
a gift copy of the early poems of Fitz-Greene 
Halleck to Catherine Sedgwick. On the title- 
page is found a patronizing line of memorandum 
from that minor celebrity in American letters, 
reading " Mr. Halleck, the author of this book, is 
a resident of New York." Aldrich has never been 
subjected to the severe pecuniary straits which 
befall so many literary men. He has undergone 
in his time, however, sufficient pressure to acquaint 
him with that side of life at least as an experience, 
to give him a proper appreciation no doubt of his 
ample worldly comfort, and also to furnish the 
stimulus for the development of his early powers. 
He had prepared, in his native town of Ports- 
mouth, to enter Harvard College, but, his father 
dying, he became a clerk instead in the commis- 
sion house of a rich uncle in New York. He had 
his own way to make in the literary world ; he be- 
gan at the very foot of the ladder, with fugitive 
contributions, and by degrees identified himself 



12 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

with the newspapers and magazines of the day. 
He even saw something of Bohemian life, a 
knowledge of which is no undesirable element in 
one who is to be a man of the world. He dined 
at Pfaff's, and was one of a coterie which circled 
around The Saturday Press and the brilliant, er- 
ratic Henry D. Clapp. I recollect passing with 
him the office of this defunct journal in Frankfort 
Street, on the occasion when he had come to 
New York to be the recipient of a complimentary 
breakfast at Delmonico's in honor of his induction 
into the editorship of The Atlantic Monthly, He 
looked with interest at the dingy quarters com- 
memorating so very different a phase of his life, 
and repeated to me the valedictory address of the 
paper: ''This paper is discontinued for want of 
funds, which, by a coincidence, is precisely the 
reason for which it was started." 

I have described Aldrich's town house. He 
passes much of his time at Ponkapog, twelve 
miles away behind the Blue Hills, and at Lynn, on 
the sea-coast. ** After its black bass and wild 
duck and teal," says our author in one of his 
charming essays, *' solitude is the chief staple of 
Ponkapog. . . . The nearest railway station 
(Heaven be praised !) is two miles distant, and the 
seclusion is without a flaw. Ponkapog has one 
mail a day ; two mails a day would render the 
place uninhabitable." He took a large old farm- 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 13 

house in the secluded place, remodeled it, ar- 
ranged for himself an attractive working study, 
and, used to men and cities though he was, for a 
period made this exclusively his home. His lead- 
ing motive was the health of his boys, who needed 
an out-of-door life. Ponkapog owes him a debt 
of gratitude for spreading its name abroad. Un- 
til the publication of his entertaining book of 
travel sketches, " From Ponkapog to Pesth," it 
must have been wholly unheard of, and even then 
I, for one, can recollect feeling that the appella- 
tion was so ingenious as to be probably fictitious. 
With a continuity that speaks strongly in its 
favor, Aldrich has passed the summers at Lynn 
for seventeen years. From these must be excepted, 
however, the summers of his jaunts to Europe, 
which are rather frequent. The latest of these took 
him to the Russian fair at Nijni Novgorod. In 
another, perhaps unlike any other traveler, he 
passed a "day [and a day only] in Africa." At 
Lynn, he has lived, in different villas, all along 
the breezy Ocean Road. This is a street worthy 
of its name, and it has a certain flavor of Newport, 
being a little remote from the central bustle of 
the great shoe-manufacturing mart to which it be- 
longs. Others will quote a list of varied advantages 
for the site ; Aldrich will be apt to tell you he likes 
it for its nearness to the railway station. The pres- 
ent house, of which he has taken a long lease, is a 



14 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

large square wooden villa, painted red. It stands 
just in the edge of a little indentation known as 
Deer Cove. *' After me, probably — who knows ? " 
says the humorous host, who is not at all afraid 
of a bit of the common vernacular. Nahant, 
Little Nahant and minor resorts are in the 
view in front ; Swampscott is three-quarters of a 
mile away, at the left, and Marblehead at no 
great distance beyond that. The feature of the 
water view is the bold little reef of Egg Rock, 
with three white dots of habitations on its back. 
** Egg Rock is exactly opposite everywhere. I 
recollect once trying to find some place to which 
it was not opposite, just as in childhood I tried 
once to walk around to the other side of the moon. 
In this latter case I suppose I must have walked 
fully two miles." So my host describes his pecu- 
liar experience with it. 

The main tide of fashion sets rather towards 
Beverly Farms and Manchester than in this direc- 
tion. The family lead, gladly, a quiet life, little 
disturbed by a bustle of visits. They depend 
chiefly for society upon the guests they bring 
down with them. They find plenty of occupation 
and interest, too, in caring for their boys. These 
are twins, as I have said, and so much twins as to 
be with difficulty distinguished apart. I was in- 
terested to know if they began to develop the 
literary faculty. ' Heaven forbid ! ' said their 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 15 

father in comic horror. Aldrich's study at Lynn 
is a modest upper room, in a wing, with a plain 
gray cartridge-paper on the walls, no pictures, and 
nothing to conspire with a flagging attention in its 
wanderings. One's first impulse, on looking up 
from the little writing-table in the center of the 
floor, would be to cast his eyes out of the single 
window, where Egg Rock, in a bit of blue sea, is 
again visible. This window should be an inspir- 
ing influence, letting in its illumination upon the 
fabrics of the heated brain ; and not in the gentler 
mood alone, for tragedy is often abroad there. 
The fog shrouds Egg Rock, then rolls in and en- 
velopes the universe under its stealthy domination; 
again, the gale spatters the brine upon the window- 
panes, and beats and roars about the house as it 
might on the light at Montauk. 

As an editor, Aldrich is methodical. He goes 
early in the day to the office of The Atlantic 
Monthly, and there writes his letters, examines 
his manuscripts, and sees (or does not see) his 
visitors upon a regular system. As to his per- 
sonal habit of writing his literature, he has none — 
at least no times and seasons. He waits for the 
mood, and defends this practice as the best, or, 
at least for him, almost the only one possible. 
This has to do, no doubt, with the small volume 
of his writings, smaller comparatively than that 
of most of his contemporaries. This result is 



1 6 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

perhaps contributed to also by the easy circum- 
stances of his life, and yet more by his devotion 
to extreme literary finish. Experienced though 
he is, and successful though he is, no manuscript 
leaves his hands to be printed till he has made at 
least three distinct and amended drafts of it. He 
could never have been a newspaper man ; the 
merest paragraph would have received the same 
care, and in the newspaper such painstaking is 
ruinous. His was a talent that had to succeed in 
the front rank or not at all. He has produced 
little of late, far too little to meet the demands 
of the audience of eager admirers he has created. 
So delightful a pen, so droll and original a fancy, 
so charming a muse, we can ill afford to spare. 
Yet that mysterious genius that goes about col- 
lecting material for the archives of permanent 
fame can have but little to dismiss from a total 
so small and a performance so choice. 

William Henry Bishop. 

[After ten years as editor of The Atlantic 
Monthlyy Mr. Aldrich resigned his position, and 
has since that time been living in Boston. In 
1893 he published "An Old Town by the Sea," 
and two years later " Unguarded Gates, and Other 
Poems." — Editors. ] 



GEORGE BANCROFT 



X7 



GEORGE BANCROFT 

AT WASHINGTON 

Mr. Bancroft, the historian, was "at home" 
beneath every roof-tree, beside every fireside, 
where books are household gods. Mr. Bancroft, 
the octogenarian, who came into the world hand 
in hand with the Nineteenth Century, was espe- 
cially at home at the capital of the country whose 
history was to him a labor of love and the absorb- 
ing occupation of a lifetime. For although his 
career was one of active participation in public 
affairs, his pursuits ran parallel with his literary 
work. He was contributing to the making of one 
period of a United States history while his pen 
was engaged in writing of other periods. If self- 
gratulation is ever permitted to authors, Mr. Ban- 
croft must have more than once exclaimed, " The 
lines have fallen to me in pleasant places ! " as he 
availed himself of opportunities which only an am- 
bassador could secure and a scholar improve. 

It is the prose- Homer of our Republic whom 
it is my privilege to present to the readers of this 
sketch. Picture to yourself a venerable man, of 

19 



20 GEORGE BANCROFT. 



medium height, slender figure, erect bearing ; 
with lofty brow thinned, but not stripped, of its 
silvery locks ; a full, snowy beard adding to his 
patriarchal appearance; bluish gray eyes, which 
neither use nor time has deprived of brightness; 
a large nose of Roman type, such as I have some- 
where read or heard that the first Napoleon re- 
garded as the sign of latent force ; " small white 
hands," which Ali Pasha assured Byron were the 
marks by which he recognized the poet to be '*a 
man of birth "; — let your imagination combine 
these details, and you have a sketch for the 
historian's portrait. The frame is a medium- 
sized room of good, high pitch. In the center is 
a rectangular table covered with books, pamphlets 
and other indications of a literary life. Shelving 
reaches to the ceiling, and every fraction of space 
is occupied by volumes of all sizes, from folio to 
duodecimo ; a door on the left opens into a room 
which is also full to overflowing with the valuable 
collections of a lifetime ; and further on is yet 
another apartment equally crowded with the 
historian's dumb servants, companions, and 
friends; while rooms and nooks elsewhere have 
yielded to Literature's rights of squatter sove- 
reignty. In the Republic of Letters, all books 
are citizens, and one is as good as another in the 
eyes of the maid-servant who kindles the break- 
fast-room fire, save perhaps the vellum Plautus or 



GEORGE BANCROFT. 21 

illuminated missal. But men are known not only 
by the society they keep, but by the books which 
surround them. Just as there are " books which 
are no books," so are there libraries which are no 
libraries. But a library selected by a scholar who 
was a book-hunter in European fields, who spared 
neither time, money, labor, nor any available agency 
in his collection, must be rich in literary treasures, 
particularly those bearing upon his specialty ; and 
such was Mr. Bancroft's library. The facilities 
which personal popularity, the fraternal spirit of 
literary men, and the courtesy of official relations 
afford, were employed by Mr. Bancroft when am- 
bassador in procuring authentic copies of invalua- 
ble writings and state-papers bearing immediately 
or remotely on the history of the American Colo- 
nies and Republic. To these facilities, and his 
own indefatigable industry and perseverance, is 
due the priceless collection of manuscripts which, 
copied in a large and legible handwriting, well- 
bound and systematically classified, adorned his 
shelves. Of the printed volumes, not the least 
precious was a copy of " Don Juan," presented to 
him with the author's compliments, sixty-six years 
ago. 

Mr. Bancroft's home was a commodious double 
house, with brown-stone front, plain and solid- 
looking, which was, before the War, the winter 
residence of a wealthy Maryland family. Diag- 



22 GEORGE BANCROFT. 

onally opposite, at the corner of the intersecting 
streets, is the *' Decatur House," whither the gal- 
lant sailor was borne after his duel with Commo- 
dore Barron, and where he died after lingering in 
agony. Within a stone's throw is the White 
House ; and I would say that the historian lived 
in the centre of Washington's Belgravia, had not 
the British Minister's residence, with an at- 
traction stronger than centripetal, drawn around 
it a social colony whose claims must be at least 
debated before judgment is pronounced. In 
front of Mr. Bancroft's house is a small court- 
yard in which, in spring-time, beds of hyacinths 
blooming in sweet and close communion show 
his love of flowers. When conversing with the his- 
torian, it was impossible to ignore the retrospect 
of a life so full of interest, for imagination per- 
sists in picturing the boyish graduate of Harvard ; 
the ambitious student at Gottingen and Berlin ; 
the inquisitive and ever-acquiring traveler ; the 
pupil returned to the bosom of his Alma Mater 
and promoted to a Fellowship with her Faculty — 
preacher, teacher, poet and translator, before his 
calling and election as his country's historian was 
sure ; his entrance into the arena of politics and 
rapid advance to the line of leadership ; his mem- 
bership in Mr. Polk's Cabinet; his subsequent 
Mission to England ; his much later Mission to 
Berlin, where he succeeded in obtaining from 



GEORGE BANCROFT. 23 

Bismarck a recognition of the "American doc- 
trine " that naturalization is expatriation, and 
negotiated a treaty which endeared him to the 
German-American heart, since the Fatherland 
may now be visited without the risk of compul- 
sory service in the army. 

When he first went abroad, an American was 
an object of curiosity to Europeans, and we may 
compare his reception among German scholars 
to that of Burns by the metaphysicians, philoso- 
phers and social leaders of Edinburgh — first sur- 
prise, and then fraternal welcome. Two years were 
spent at Gottingen, and half ayear at Berlin. Du- 
ring this period he was the pupil and companion 
of the great philologist Wolf, of whom Ticknor's 
delightful Memoirs contain such an entertaining 
account ; he studied under Schlosser, who so fre- 
quently appears in the pages of Crabb Robinson's 
Memoirs ; he was a favorite with Heeren, whose 
endorsement of his history was the imprimatur 
of a literary Pope. In his subsequent wanderings 
through France, Switzerland, and over the Alps 
into Italy, he experienced the friendly offices of 
men distinguished in literature, famous in history, 
and foremost in politics. Some time was spent 
in Paris. With Lafayette intimate relations 
were established; so much so, that the champion 
of republican principles enlisted the young and 
sympathetic American in his too sanguine 



a4 GEORGE BANCROFT, 

schemes. Miiiuiscripl addresses wore entrusted to 
Mr. Haneroft to be published and disseminated at 
certain places along his Italian journey. But the 
youthful lieutenant saw soon the impracticability 
of the veteran's hopes antl plans. 

It was a novel sensation to converse with one 
who survived so many famous men of many lands 
with whom he came in contact ; one who discussed 
l^yron with Goethe at Weimar, and Goethe with 
Byron at Monte Nero; who, seventy years ago, 
went to Washington and dined at the White 
House with the younger Adams; who since min- 
gled with the successive generations of American 
statesn\cn ; witnessed the death of one great 
political party, and the birth of another, but him- 
self clung with conserx'ative consistency to the 
principles he espoused in early manhood. Yet 
neither his years nor his tastes exiled him from 
the enjoyment of a congenial element of society 
at the capital. Init his circle rarely touched 
the circumference which surrounds the gay 
and ultra-fashionable coteries of a Washington 
season. 

Mr. Bancroft had a warm sympathy for youth 
and childhood, and took pleasure in the occasions 
that brought them aiound him. His habits were 
those of one who early appreciated the fact that 
time is the most reliable and ax-ailable tool of the 
worker. It was for years his custom to rise to his 



GEORGE BANCROFT, 25 

labors at five o'clock. After a noon-luncheon, he 
took the exercise which contributed so much to his 
physical and intellectual activity. He covered 
considerable distances daily on foot or horseback, 
for he was both pedestrian and rider of the Eng- 
lish type; or, if the weather did not favor these 
methods of laying in a supply of oxygen, he might 
have been seen reclining in a roomy two-horse 
phaeton. 

Two generations intervened between the youth- 
ful visitor at the capital and the venerable states- 
man and historian, who in his last days, beneath his 
own vine and fig-tree, "crowned a youth of labor 
with an age of ease." Vet the preacher, teacher, 
poet, essayist, translator, philologist, linguist, 
statesman, diplomat, historian, pursued with tem- 
pered ardor his literary avocations. Readers of 
The North American Review had the pleasure of 
perusing, some years ago, his valuable paper on 
Holmes's "Emerson." He published more re- 
cently (in 1886) a brochure on the Legal Tender 
Acts and Decisions; but nothing was ever al- 
lowed to interfere with the revision of his opus 
major, the History of the United States, the 
sixth and last volume of the new edition of 
which was issued by the Appletons in February, 
1885. 

As an octogenarian is not, strictly speaking, a 
contemporary, I venture to enter the realm of 



26 ' GEORGE BANCROFT. 

biography, and refer to what renders Mr. Bancroft 
the most interesting of American authors. His 
translation from the path of pedagogy, from the 
dream-land of poetry, from the atmosphere of 
theology, and the arena of party strife and the 
novelty of official life, was a transition from ex- 
treme to extreme. Yet he brought with him 
into his new fields the best fruits of his experience 
in the old. He did not inflame the passions of 
the masses at the hustings, but instructed their 
judgment. When he assumed the office of 
Collector of the Port of Boston, he exhibited a 
capacity for business which would have silenced 
the modern Senator who not only characterized 
scholars as " them literary fellers," but prefixed 
an adjective which may not be repeated to ears 
polite. How many Cabinet officers are remem- 
bered for any permanent reform or progressive 
movement they have accomplished or initiated ? 
But to Mr. Bancroft the country owes the es- 
tablishment of the Naval School at Annapolis ; 
and science is indebted to his fostering care for 
the contributory usefulness of the National Ob- 
servatory, which languished until he took the 
Naval portfolio. When at the Court of St. 
James he negotiated America's first postal trea- 
ty with Great Britain ; while allusion has been 
made to the important service rendered at the 
German capital. In politics Mr. Bancroft was 



GEORGE BANCROFT. 27 

always a Democrat. He was one of those who 
angered fanatics by their love for the Constitution, 
and enraged secessionists by their devotion to the 
Union, — who labored to avert the War, but whom 
the first gun fired at Fort Sumter rallied to the 
support of Mr. Lincoln. And when the last great 
eulogy of the martyred President was to be pro- 
nounced, Mr. Bancroft was chosen to deliver it. 

On the approach of summer, Mr. Bancroft led 
the exodus which leaves the capital a deserted vil- 
lage. July found him domiciled at Newport, in an 
old, roomy house, which faces Bellevue Avenue 
and is surrounded by venerable trees, beneath 
whose wide- spreading shade the visitor drives to 
the historian's summer home. The view of the 
ocean is one of the accidental charms of the spot, 
but the historian's own hand dedicated an exten- 
sive plot to a garden of roses — the flower which 
was nearest to his heart. At Newport he led a 
life similar to that in Washington. He rose early 
and saw the sun rise above the sea; he devoted a 
portion of his time to literary pursuits, and entered 
into the social life of the place, without taking part 
in its gayeties. In October he struck his tent, and 
returned to his other home in time to enjoy the 
beauties of our Indian summer. 

B. G. LovEjOY, 



GEORGE H. BOKER 



29 



GEORGE H. BOKER 

IN PHILADELPHIA 

Like Washington Irving, Bancroft, Hawthorne, 
Lowell, Motley, Bayard Taylor, and Bret Harte, 
George H. Boker may be counted among those 
American authors who have been called upon to 
serve their country in an official capacity abroad. 
But the greater part of his life was spent in Phila- 
delphia, where he was born in 1823. The house 
stands in Walnut Street ; a building of good height, 
with a facing of conventional brown-stone, and 
set in the heart of the distinctively aristocratic 
quarter. For Mr. Boker was born to the inheri- 
tance of wealth and a strong social position, and 
it is natural that the place and the face of his 
house should testify to this circumstance. In 
fact, he was so closely connected with the society 
which enjoys a reputed leisure, that when as a 
young man he declared his purpose of making 
authorship and literature his life-work, his circle 
regarded him as hopelessly erratic. Philadel- 
phians, in those days, could respect imported 
poets, and no doubt partially appreciated poetry 

31 



32 GEORGE H,. BOKER. 

in books, as an ornamental adjunct of life. But 
poetry in an actual, breathing, male American 
creature of their own ''set," was a different mat- 
ter. The infant industry of the native Muse was 
one that they never thought of fostering. 

It was soon after graduating at Nassau Hall, 
Princeton, that Boker make known his intention 
of becoming an author. From what I have 
heard, I infer that his resolve caused his neigh- 
bors to look upon him with somewhat the same 
feeling as if he had suddenly been deposited on 
their decorous doorsteps in the character of a 
foundling. Nevertheless, he persisted quietly ; 
and he succeeded in maintaining his position as 
a poet of high rank and an accomplished man 
of the world, who also took an active part in 
public affairs. He takes place with Motley on 
our roll of well-known authors, as a rich young 
man giving himself to letters ; and it is even 
more remarkable that he should have cultivated 
poetry in Philadelphia, where the conditions 
were unfavorable, than that Motley should have 
taken up history in Boston, where the conditions 
were wholly propitious. Boker's house bears the 
impress of his various and comprehensive tastes. 
To this extent it becomes an illustration of his 
character, and the illustration is worth consid- 
ering. 

The first floor, as one enters from the hallway, 



GEORGE H. BOKER. 33 

contains the dining-room at the back, and a 
long, stately drawing-room fitted up with old-time 
richness and imbued with an atmosphere of 
courtly reception. But the library or study is 
above, on the second floor. It has two windows 
looking out southward over the garden in the 
rear of the house, and the whole effect of the 
room is that of luxurious comfort mingled with 
an opulence of books. The walls are hung with 
brown and gilded paper, and the visitor's feet 
press upon a heavy Turkish carpet, brought by 
the poet himself from Constantinople, suggesting 
the quietude of Tennyson's "' hushed seraglios." 
The chairs and the lounges are covered with yel- 
low morocco. On the wall between the two 
windows hangs a copy of the Chandos portrait of 
Shakspeare ; and below this there is a large 
writing-table, provided with drawers and cup- 
boards, where Mr. Boker kept his manuscripts. 
His work, however, was not done at this desk, for 
in the centre of the room there was a round table 
under the chandelier, with a large arm-chair drawn 
up beside it. In this chair, and at this round 
table, Mr. Boker wrote nearly all his works ; but, 
unlike most authors, he did not do his writing on 
the table. A portfolio held in front of him, while 
he sat in the chair, served his purpose ; and it may 
also be worth while to note the fact that his plays 



34 GEORGE H. BQKER. 

and his poems, composed in this spot, were first 
set down in pencil. 

The surroundings are delightful. On all sides 
the walls are filled with book-cases reaching 
almost to the ceiling ; the windows are hung 
with heavy curtains decorated with Arabic 
designs ; and in winter a fire of soft coal burns in 
the large grate at one side of the apartment. The 
books that glisten from the shelves are cased in 
bindings and covers of the finest sort, made by 
the best artists of England and France. As to 
their contents, the strength lies in a collection of 
old English drama and poetry and a complete set 
of the Latin classics. It must be said here, how- 
ever, that Mr. Boker's books are by no means 
confined to the library. The presence of books 
is visible all through the house, and one can 
trace at various points the fact that the owner of 
these books has always aimed to collect the best 
editions. In later days Mr. Boker has, in a 
measure, been exiled from the companionship of 
the choicest books in his study ; because, in order 
to obtain uninterrupted quiet, he has been 
obliged to retire to a small room on the floor 
above his library, where he is more secure from 
disturbance. 

The dining-room is a noteworthy apartment, 
not only because many distinguished persons 
have been entertained in it, but also because it is 



CEORGE H. BOKER. %% 

beautifully finished with a ceiling and walls of 
black oak, framing scarlet panels, that set off the 
buffets and side-cases full of silver services. If 
any one fancies, however, that the appointments 
of the dining-room and the library indicate a too 
Sybaritic taste, he should ascend to the top floor 
of the house, where Mr. Boker had a workshop 
containing a complete outfit for a turner in metals. 
Mr. Boker always had a taste for working at what 
he called his " trade " of producing various arti- 
cles in metal, on his turning-lathe. In younger 
days it used to be his boast that he could go into 
the shop of any machinist, take off his coat, 
and earn his living as a skilled workman. He 
still practiced at the bench in his own workshop, at 
the age of sixty-five. It seems to me that he was 
unique among American authors, in uniting with 
the grace and fire of a genuine poet the diversions 
of a rich society man, the functions of a public 
official, and a capacity for practical work as a 
mechanic. 

We must bear in mind, also, that this skilled 
laborer, this man of social leisure and amusement, 
and this poet, was also a man of intense action in 
the time of the Civil War, when he organized the 
Union League of Philadelphia, which consolidated 
loyal sentiment in the chief city of Pennsylvania, 
at the time when that city was wavering. All the 
Union Leagues of the country were patterned 



36 ' GEORGE H. BOKER. 

after this organization in Philadelphia. More- 
over, when Mr. Boker undertook and carried on 
this work, his whole fortune was in danger of loss, 
from a maliciously inspired law-suit. With the 
risk of complete financial ruin impending, he 
devoted himself wholly to the cause of patriot- 
ism, and poured out poem after poem that 
became the battle-cry of loyalists throughout the 
North. His character and services won the friend- 
ship of General Grant ; and after the War, he was 
appointed United States Minister to Turkey ; 
from which post he was promoted to St. Peters- 
burg. The impression he made at that capital 
was so deep that, when he was recalled, Gort- 
schakoff received his successor with these words : 
** I cannot say I am glad to see you. In fact, I'm 
not sure that I see you at all, for the tears that 
are in my eyes on account of the departure of our 
friend Boker." In both of these places he 
rendered important services. Among the dramas 
which were the fruit of his youth, "Calaynos" 
and ** Francesca da Rimini " achieved a great 
success, both in England and in this country. 
The revival of " Francesca da Rimini " at the 
hands of Lawrence Barrett, and its run of two or 
three seasons, thirty years after its production, is 
one of the most remarkable events in the history 
of the American stage. Nor should it be forgot- 
ten that Daniel Webster valued one of Boker's 



GEORGE H. BOKER. 37 

sonnets so much, that he kept it in memory to 
recite ; and that Leigh Hunt selected Boker as one 
of the best exponents of mastery in the perfect 
sonnet. 

An early portrait of Mr. Boker bears strong re- 
semblance to Nathaniel Hawthorne in his manly 
prime. But passing decades, while they did not 
bend the tall, erect figure, whitened the thick, 
military-looking moustache and short curling hair 
that contrasted strikingly with a firm, ruddy com- 
plexion. His commanding presence and distin- 
guished appearance were as well known in Phila- 
delphia as his sturdy personality and polished 
manners were. For many years he continued to 
act as President both of the Union League and of 
the old, aristocratic, yet hospitable, Philadelphia 
Club. These two clubs, his home occupations and 
his numerous social engagements occupied much 
of his leisure during the winter; and his summers 
were usually spent at some fashionable resort of 
the quieter order. How he contrived to find time 
for reading and composition it is hard to guess; 
but his pencil was not altogether idle even in his 
last years. When a man had so consistently held 
his course and fixed his place as a poet, a drama- 
tist, a brilliant member of society, an active patriot 
and a diplomatist, it seems to me quite worth our 
while to recognize that he did this under circum- 
stances of inherited wealth which usually lead to 



38 GEORGE H, BOKER. 

inertness. It is worth our while to observe that 
a rich American devoted his life to literature, and 
did so much to make us feel that he deserved to be 
one of the few American authors who enjoyed a 
luxurious home. 

George Parsons Lathrop. 



JOHN BURROUGHS 



39 



JOHN BURROUGHS 

AT ESOPUS ON THE HUDSON 

When the author of " Winter Sunshine " comes 
to town, it is over the most perfectly graded 
track and through the finest scenery about New 
York. Returning he is carried past Weehawken 
and the Palisades, through the Jersey Meadows, 
in and out among the West Shore Highlands, 
under West Point, and past Newburg factories 
and Marlborough berry farms. He leaves the 
train at West Park, mounts a hill through a peach- 
orchard, crosses a grassy field, and the high-road 
when he reaches the top, opens a rustic gate, and 
is at home. From the road, you look down upon 
the roofs and dormers and chimneys of the house, 
about ^half covered with the red and purple foli- 
age of the Virginia creeper. The ground slopes 
quite steeply, so that the house is two stories 
high on the side next the road and three on the 
side toward the river, which winds away between 
high, wooded banks to the Catskills, twenty miles to 
the north, and to the Highlands, thirty miles to the 
south. The slope, in the rear of the house, to the 
river, is laid out in a grapery and an orchard of 

41 



42 JOHN BURROUGHS. 

apple and peach trees. Between the house and 
the road the steep hillside is tufted with ever- 
greens and other ornamental trees. At the foot 
of the hill, the gray roofs of a big ice-house are 
seen. Squirrels, that have their nests in the saw- 
dust packing, clamber around the walls. Near 
the house, to the left, there is a substantial store- 
house, and a carriage-shed and stable. There are 
two other dwellings on the farm. The country 
immediately about is all very much alike, nearly 
half of it in ornamental plantations surrounding 
neat country houses ; the other half, where it is 
not occupied by rocks, being covered with fruit, 
or corn, or grass. The opposite shore of the 
Hudson is of the same character, varied with 
clumps of timber, villas and farm-houses of the 
style that was in vogue before the introduction 
of the so-called Queen Anne mode of building; a 
few cultivated fields and many wild meadows and 
out -cropping ridges of slate rock intervening. 
But the interior country, on the hither-side, back 
of the railroad which cuts through the slate hills 
like a hay-knife, is a perfect wilderness — rugged, 
barren, and uninhabited. A number of little 
lakes lie behind the first range of hills, the highest 
of which has been named by Mr. Burroughs 
Mount Hymettus, because it is a famous place 
for wild bees and sumac honey. From one of 
these ponds, an exemplary mountain stream — 



JOHN BURROUGHS. 43 

model of all that a mountain stream should be — 
makes its way by a series of cascades into the 
valley, where it forms deep pools, peopled by sil- 
very chub and black bass, brawls over ledges, 
sparkles in the sun, and sleeps in the shadow, and 
performs all the recognized and traditional brook 
" business " to perfection. Its specialty is its bed 
of black stones and dark green moss, which has 
gained it its name of Black Creek. At one spot, 
where it passes under a high bank overhung by 
hemlocks, it has communicated its dark color to 
the very frogs that jump into it, and to the 
dragonflies that rid it of mosquitoes. 

The road between West Park and Esopus 
crosses this brook near a ruined mill, whose 
charred rafters lie in the cellar, and whose wheel- 
buckets are filled with corn-shucks. The ruby 
berries of the nightshade hang in over its window- 
sills. This is the most varied two miles of road 
that I can bring to mind. Starting with a fine 
view up and down the river, it soon dips into the 
valley, between walls of slate and rows of tall 
locusts. The locusts are succeeded by the firs 
and pines of a carefully kept estate. Then comes 
the stream, spanned by a rustic bridge ; the ruined 
mill, and the new rise of ground which, beyond 
the railroad, reaches up into summits covered 
with red oaks and flaming orange maples. A tree 
by the roadside, now torn in two by a storm, is 



44 JOHN BURROUGHS. 

pointed out by Mr. Burroughs as the former home 
of an old friend of his — a brown owl who, in 
the course of a ten years* acquaintanceship, as if 
dreading the contempt that familiarity breeds, 
never showed an entire and unhesitating confi- 
dence in him. The bird would slink out of sight 
as he approached — slowly and by imperceptible 
degrees ; wisely effacing himself rather than that 
it should be said he was too intimate with a mere 
human. Esopus contains a tavern, a post-office, 
a bank, a blacksmith-shop, and one or two houses ; 
and yet — like an awkward contingency — one never 
suspects its existence until he has got fairly into 
it. From the railroad station it is invisible ; it 
cannot be seen from the river; and the road, 
which runs through it, knows nothing of it before 
or after. 

Mr. Burroughs's portrait must be drawn out of 
doors. He is of a medium height, but being 
well-built and having a fine head, he gives the 
impression of being by no means a middling sort 
of a man, physically. His skin is well tanned by 
exposure to all sorts of weather. He has grisly 
hair and beard. The eyes and mouth have a 
somewhat feminine character ; the eyes are humid, 
rather large, and they are half closed when he is 
pleased ; the lips are full, the line between them 
never hard, and the corners of the mouth are 
blunt. The nose would be Roman, if it were a 



JOHN BURROUGHS. 45 

trifle longer. I make no apology for giving so 
short a description of a man whom it would be 
well worth while to paint. It is unnecessary 
to sketch his mental features, for he has uncon- 
sciously placed them on record, himself, in the 
delightful series of essays which he has added to 
the treasures of the English language. 

His walks, his naturalistic rambles, his longer 
boating or shooting excursions, are the subjects 
of some of his most entertaining chapters ; but a 
not impertinent curiosity may be gratified by 
some account of his everyday life when at home 
and at work. His literary labors are at a stand- 
still throughout the summer. He does not take 
notes. Even when he has returned from camping 
out, or canoeing, or from his summer vacation of 
whatever form, he does not rush at once to pen 
and paper. He waits till the spirit moves him, 
which it usually begins to do a little after the 
first frosts. He rises early — between five and six 
o'clock ; breakfasts, reads the newspapers or em- 
ploys himself about the house and farm until 
nine or ten ; then writes for three or four hours, 
seldom more. He has always refused to do liter- 
ary work to order, although he has had some 
tempting offers. He will write only what he 
pleases, and when he pleases, and so much as he 
pleases. And he observes no method in prepar- 
ing, any more than in doing, his work. He exacts 



46 JOHN BURROUGHS, 

from himself no account of his time. He does 
not feel himself bound in conscience to improve 
every incident that has occurred, every observa- 
tion he has made during the year. He simply 
lets the material which he has absorbed distill 
over into essays long or short, few or many, as 
providence directs. He does not belong to the 
class of methodical laborers who make a business 
of writing, and who would feel conscience-stricken 
if, at the close of their working-day, they had not 
blackened a certain number of sheets of white 
paper. But he acknowledges that good work is 
done in that way, and he thinks it is all a matter 
of habit. 

His neighbors see to it that his leisure does not 
degenerate into idleness. They have made a 
bank examiner of him, and a superintendent of 
roads, and, latterly, a postmaster. The first- 
mentioned position is the only one that has any 
emoluments attached to it ; but, as he likes to 
drive, he thinks it for his interest to see after the 
roads, and he hopes, now that his post-office at 
West Farms is in working order, to get his mails 
in good time. 

Most of his books—" Wake Robin," " Birds and 
Poets," " Winter Sunshine," etc. — were written 
in the library of his house, a small room, fitted 
with book-shelves both glazed and open, and 
enjoying a splendid view of the Hudson to and be- 



JOHN BURROUGHS. 47 

yond Poughkeepsie. But he has lately built him- 
self a study, several hundred yards from the house 
and more directly overlooking the river. Here 
he has pretty complete immunity from noise and 
from interruptions of all sorts. It is a little, 
square building, the walls rough-cast within and 
faced with long strips of bark without. Papers, 
magazines, books, photographs, lithographs lie 
scattered over the table, the window-sills and the 
floor, and fill some shelves let into a little recess 
in the wall. A student's lamp on the table shows 
that the owner sometimes reads here at night. 
His room-mates at present are some wasps hatched 
out of a nest taken last winter and suspended to 
the chimney. This primitive erection is further 
ornamented with a lot of pictures of men and 
birds, the men mostly poets — Carlyle being the 
only exception — and the birds all songsters. Two 
steps from the study is a summer-house of hem- 
lock branches, with gnarled vine-stocks twisted 
in among them, where one may sit of an after- 
noon and read the New York morning papers, or 
watch the boats or the trains on the opposite 
bank, or the antics of a squirrel among the 
branches of the apple-tree overhead, or the strug- 
gles of a honey-bee backing out of a flower of 
yellow-rattle. 

Mr. Burroughs has been his own architect ; and 
I know many people who might wish that he had 
been theirs too. He planned and superintended 



4^ JOHN BURROUGHS, 

the erection of his house, which is a four-gabled 
structure, with a porch in front and a broad bal- 
cony in the rear. Most of the timber for the 
upper story is oak from his old Delaware County 
farm. The stone of which the two lower stories 
are built was obtained on the spot, and is a dark 
slate plentifully veined with quartz. Great pains 
were taken in the building to turn the handsomest 
samples of quartz to the fore, and to put them 
where they would do the most good, artistically. 
Over the lintel of the door, for example, is a row 
of three fine specimens ; and a big chunk, with 
mosses lying between its crystals, protrudes from 
the wall near the porch. The variety of color so 
obtained, with the drab woodwork of the upper 
story and the red Virginia vine, keeps the house, 
at all seasons, in harmony with its surroundings. 
It is no less so within ; for doors, wainscots, 
window-frames, joists, sills, skirting-boards, floor 
and rafters are all of native woods, left of their 
natural colors, and skillfully contrasted with one 
another; one door being of Georgia pine with 
oak panels, another of chestnut and curled maple, 
a third of butternut and cherry, and so on. 
Grayish, or brownish, or russet wall-papers, and 
carpets to match, give the house very much of 
the appearance of a nest, into the composition of 
which nothing enters that is not of soft textures 
and low and harmonious color. 

Roger Riordan. 



GEORGE W. CABLE 



49 



GEORGE W. CABLE 

AT NEW ORLEANS AND NORTHAMPTON 

Far up in the " garden district " of New Orleans 
stands a pretty cottage, painted in soft tones of 
olive and red. A strip of lawn bordered with 
flowers lies in front of it, and two immense orange 
trees, beautiful at all seasons of the year, form an 
arch above the steps that lead up to the piazza. 
Here Mr. Cable made his home for some years, 
and here were written " The Grandissimes," 
" Madame Delphine " and " Dr. Sevier." Those 
who were fortunate enough to pass beyond its 
portals found the interior cosy and tasteful, with- 
out any attempt at display. The study was a 
room of many doors and windows with low book- 
cases lining the walls, and adorned with pictures 
in oil and water-colors by G. H. Clements, and in 
black and white by Joseph Pennell. The desk, 
around which hovered so many memories of Bras- 
Coup^, and Madame Delphine, and gentle Mary, 
was a square, old-fashioned piece of furniture, 
severely plain, but very roomy. 

Neither was comfort neglected; for a hammock 
swung in the study, in which the author could rest, 

51 



52 GEORGE W. CABLE. 

from time to time, from his labors. Mr. Cable's 
plan of work is unusually methodical, for his 
counting-room training has stood him in good 
stead. All his notes and references are carefully- 
indexed and journaled, and so systematized that 
he can turn, without a moment's delay, to any au- 
thority he wishes to consult. In this respect, as 
in many others, he has not, perhaps, his equal 
among living authors. In making his notes, it is 
his usual custom to write in pencil on scraps of 
paper. These notes are next put into shape, still 
in pencil, and the third copy, intended for the 
press, is written in ink on note-paper — the chiro- 
graphy exceedingly neat, delicate and legible. He 
is always exact, and is untiring in his researches. 
The charge of anachronism has several times 
been laid at his door ; but this is an accusation it 
would be difficult to prove. Before attempting to 
write upon any historical point, he gathers together 
all available data without reckoning time or 
trouble ; and, under such conditions, nothing is 
more unlikely than that he should be guilty of 
error. Mr. Cable has a great capacity for work, 
and his earlier stories were written under the 
stress of unremitting toil. Later, when he was 
able to emerge from business life and follow 
the profession of literature exclusively, he con- 
tinued his labors in the church, and never allowed 
any engagement to interfere with his Sunday- 



GEORGE W. CABLE. 53 

school and Bible-classes. In his books, religion 
has the same place that it takes in a good man's 
life. Nothing is said or done for effect ; neither 
is he ashamed to confess his faith before the 
world. 

It is perhaps strange that Mr. Cable should 
have the true artistic, as well as the religious, 
temperament, since these two do not invariably 
go hand in hand. Music, painting, and sculpture 
are full of charms for him, and he is an intuitive 
judge of what is best in art. His knowledge of 
music is far above the ordinary, and he has made 
a unique study of the usually elusive and baffling 
strains of different song-birds. He is such a 
many-sided man that he should never find a 
moment of the day hanging heavily upon his 
hands. The study of botany was a source of 
great pleasure to him, at one time ; and he had, 
also, an aviary in which he took a deep interest. 

Seemingly sedate, Mr. Cable is full of fun ; and 
charming as he is in general society, a compli- 
ment may be paid him that cannot often be 
spoken truthfully of men of genius — namely, that 
he appears to the best advantage in his own 
home. His children are a merry little band of 
five girls and one boy, each evincing, young as 
they are, some distinctive talent. It is amusing 
to note their appreciation of * father's fun,* and 
his playful speeches always give the signal for 



54 GEORGE W. CABLE. 

bursts of laughter. This spirit of humor, so 
potent " to witch the heart out of things evil," is 
either hereditary or contagious, for all of these 
little folks are ready of tongue. The friends 
whom Mr. Cable left behind him, in New 
Orleans, remember with regretful pleasure the 
delightful little receptions which have now 
become a thing of the past. Sometimes, at these 
gatherings, he would sing an old Scotch balled, 
in his clear, sweet tenor voice, or one of those 
quaint Creole songs that he has since made 
famous on the lecture platform ; or, again, he 
would read a selection from '' Dukesborough 
Tales " — one of his favorite humorous works. 
Nothing was stereotyped or conventional, for 
Mr. Cable is, in every aspect of life, a dangerous 
enemy of the common-place. But the pleasant 
dwelling-place has passed into other hands ; other 
voices echo through the rooms ; and Mr. Cable 
has found a new home in a more invigorating 
climate. 

The highway leading from the town of North- 
ampton, Mass., which one must follow in order 
to find Mr. Cable's house, has the aspect of a 
quiet country road, but is, in reality, one of the 
streets of the city, with underlying gas and 
water-pipes. It is studded with handsome dwell- 
ings, some of brick and stone, others of simple 
frame-work — each with velvet lawn shaded with 



GEORGE W. CABLE. 55 

Spreading elms, and here and there a birch or 
pine. The romancer's house is the last at the 
edge of the town, on what is fitly named the 
Paradise Road. It is a red brick building of two 
stories and a half, with a vine-covered piazza ; 
and the smooth-cut lawn slopes gently down to 
the street, separated only from the sidewalk by a 
stone coping. Above all things, one is conscious, 
on entering here, of a sense of comfort and home 
happiness. The furniture is simple but exceed- 
ingly tasteful, of light woods with little uphol- 
stery; and the visitor finds an abundance of easy- 
chairs and settees of willow. The study is a 
delightful nook, opening by sliding doors from 
the parlor on one side and the hall on another. 
A handsome table of polished cherry, usually 
strewn with books and papers, occupies the center 
of the room, and, as in the old home, the walls 
are lined with book-shelves. A large easy-chair, 
upon which the thoughtful wife insisted, when 
the room was being fitted up, affords a welcome 
resting-place to the weary author. Sometimes 
she lends her gentle presence to the spot, and sits 
there, with her quiet needlework, while the story 
or lecture is in the course of preparation. One 
of the charms of this sanctum is the view from 
the two windows that extend nearly to the floor. 
From one may be descried the blue and hazy 
line of the Hampshire hills, while from the other 



56 GEORGE W. CABLM. 

one sees Mt. Holyoke and Mt. Tom uprearing 
their stately heads to the sky. Sloping down 
from the carriage-drive which passes it lies Para- 
dise — a stretch of woods bordering Mill River. 
No more appropriate name could be given it, for 
if magnificent trees, beautiful flowers, green-clad 
hill and dell, and winding waters, and above all, 
the perfect peace of nature, broken only by bird- 
notes, can make a paradise, it is found in this 
corner of Northampton, itself the loveliest of 
New England towns. Mr. Cable confesses that 
this scene of enchantment is almost too distract- 
ing to the mind, and that, when deeply engaged 
in composition, he finds it necessary to draw the 
curtains. 

If the days in Mr. Cable's home are delightful, 
the evenings are not less charming. After the 
merry tea and the constitutional walk have been 
taken, the family gather in the sitting-room. 
Usually, two or three friends drop in ; but if 
none come, the children are happy to draw 
closely around their father, while he plays old- 
time songs or Creole dances on his guitar. As 
he sings, one after another joins in, and finally 
the day is ended with a hymn and the evening 
worship. The hour is early, for the hard-working 
brain must have its full portion of rest. It is one 
of Mr. Cable's firm-rooted principles that the 
mind can not do its best unless the body is well 



GEORGE W. CABLE. 57 

treated ; and he gives careful attention to all 
rules of health. Apart from the brilliant fact of 
his genius, this is the secret of the evenness of 
his work. There is no feverish energy weaken- 
ing into feverish lassitude ; it moves on without 
haste, without rest. Mr. Cable well advised a 
young writer never to publish anything but his 
best ; and it is this principle, doubtless, that has 
prevented him from thinking it necessary, as 
many English and American authors seem to 
fancy, to turn out a certain amount of printed 
matter every year. In addition to his literary 
labors, Mr. Cable is frequently absent from home 
on reading and lecture engagements, and great is 
the rejoicing of his family when they have him 
once more among them. Mr. Cable's place in 
literature is as unique as that of Hawthorne. 
He is distinctively and above all things an 
American. He has not found it necessary to 
cross the water in search of inspiration ; and he 
is the only American author of any prominence 
whose turn of mind has never been influenced by 
the foreign classics. 

What Bret Harte has done for the stern angu- 
larity of Western life, Mr. Cable has wrought, in 
infinitely finer and subtler lines, for his soft- 
featured and passionate native land. Those who 
come after him in delineation of Creole character 
can only be followers in his footsteps, for to hin^ 



58 GEORGE W. CABLE. 

alone belongs the credit of striking this new vein, 
so rich in promise and fulfillment. An alien com- 
ing among them would be as one who speaks a 
different language. He would be impressed only 
by superficial peculiarities, and would chronicle 
them from this standpoint. But Mr. Cable 
knows these people to their heart's core ; he is 
saturated with their individuality and traditions ; 
to him their very inflection of voice, turn of the 
head, motion of the hands, is eloquent with mean- 
ing. His work will endure because it is entirely 
wholesome, and full of that " sanity of mind " 
which speaks with such a strenuous voice to the 
mass of mankind. The writer who appeals from 
a diseased imagination to an audience full of 
diseased and morbid tastes, must necessarily have 
a small client^e ; for there are comparatively few 
people, as balanced against the vast hordes of 
workers, who are so satiated with the good things 
of this life that they must always seek for some 
new sensation strong enough to blister their 
jaded palates. The men and women who labor 
and endure desire after their day of toil some- 
thing that will cheer and refresh ; and this will 
remain so as long as health predominates over 
disease. 

The engraving in The Century of February, 
1882, has made the reading public familiar with 
Mr. Cable's features ; but there is lacking the 



GEORGE W, CABLE. 59 

lurking sparkle in the dark hazel eyes, and the 
curving of the lips into a peculiarly winning 
smile. In person, Mr. Cable is small and slight, 
with chestnut hair, beard and moustache ; and 
there is a marked development of the forehead 
above the eyebrows, supposed, by believers in 
phrenology, to indicate unusual musical talent. 
On paper, it is hard to express the charm of his 
individuality, or the pleasure of listening to his 
sunny talk, with its quaint turns of thought and 
the felicitous phrases that spring spontaneously 
to his lips. Those who have been impressed by 
the deep humanity that made it possible for him 
to write such a book as ** Dr. Sevier,** will find the 
man and the author one and indivisible. Noth- 
ing is forced, or uttered for the sake of making 
an impression ; and the listener may be sure that 
Mr. Cable is saying what he thinks. The con- 
scientiousness that enabled him to be a brave 
soldier and an untiring business man, runs 
through his whole life ; and he has none of that 
moral cowardice which staves off an expression 
of opinion with a falsely pleasant word. 

J. K. Wetherill. 

[Eight years ago Mr. Cable left the house in 
Paradise Road for a new Colonial house on " Dry- 
ad's Green," against a background of pines, — 
" Tarryawhile," with a cottage workshop of two 
rooms near by. — Editors.] 



S. L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN) 



6l 



S. L CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN) 

At HARTFORD AND ELMIRA 

The story of Mark Twain's life has been told 
so often that it has lost its novelty to many 
readers, though its romance has the quality of 
permanence. But people to-day are more inter- 
ested in the author than they are in the printer, 
the pilot, the miner, or the reporter, of twenty or 
thirty years ago. The editor of one of the most 
popular American magazines once alluded to him 
as "the most widely read person who writes 
in the English language." More than half a mil- 
lion copies of his books have been sold in this 
country. England and the English colonies all 
over the world have taken at least half as many 
in addition. His sketches and shorter articles 
have been published in every language which is 
printed, and the larger books have been trans- 
lated into German, French, Italian, Norwegian, 
Danish, etc. He is one of the few living men 
with a truly world-wide reputation. Unless the 
excellent gentlemen who have been engaged in 
revising the Scriptures should claim the author- 
ship of their work, there is no other living writer 

63 



64 -S*. Z. CLEMENS {MARK TWAIN), 

whose books are now so widely read as Mark 
Twain's ; and it may not be out of the way to 
add that in more than one pious household the 
** Innocents Abroad " is laid beside the family 
Bible, and referred to as a hand-book of Holy 
Land description and narrative. 

Off the platform and out of his books, Mark 
Twain is Samuel L. Clemens — a man who was 
born November 30, 1835. ^^ is of a very 
noticeable personal appearance, with his slender 
figure, his finely shaped head, his thick, curling, 
very gray hair, his heavy arched eyebrows, 
over dark gray eyes, and his sharply, but deli- 
cately, cut features. Nobody is going to mis- 
take him for any one else, and his attempts to 
conceal his identity at various times have been 
comical failures. In 1871 Mr. Clemens made his 
home in Hartford, and in some parts of the 
world Hartford to-day is best known because it is 
his home. He built a large and unique house in 
Nook Farm, on Farmington Avenue, about a 
mile and a quarter from the old centre of the 
city. It was the fancy of its designer to show 
what could be done with bricks in building, and 
what effect of variety could be got by changing 
their color, or the color of the mortar, or the 
angle at which they were set. The result has 
been that a good many of the later houses built 
in Hartford reflect in one way or another the in- 



S. L. CLEMENS {MA RFC TWALV). 6$ 

iluence of this one. In their travels in Europe, 
Mr. and Mrs. Clemens have found various rich 
antique pieces of household furniture, including 
a great wooden mantel and chimney-piece, now 
in their library, taken from an English baronial 
hall, and carved Venetian tables, bedsteads, and 
other pieces. These add their peculiar charm to 
the interior of the house. The situation of the 
building makes it very bright and cheerful. On 
the top floor is Mr. Clemens's own working-room. 
In one corner is his writing-table, covered usu- 
ally with books, manuscripts, letters, and other 
literary litter ; and in the middle of the room 
stands the billiard-table, upon which a large part 
of the work of the place is expended. By strict 
attention to this business, Mr. Clemens has 
become an expert in the game ; and it is part of 
his life in Hartford to get a number of friends 
together every Friday for an evening of billiards. 
He even plans his necessary trips away from 
home so as to get back in time to observe this 
established custom. 

Mr. Clemens divides his year into two parts, 
which are not exactly for work and play respect- 
ively, but which differ very much in the nature 
of their occupations. From the first of June to 
the middle of September, the whole family, con- 
sisting of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens and their three 
little girls, are at Elmira, N. Y. They live there 



66 s. L. CLEMENS {MARK TWAIN). 

with Mr. T. W. Crane, whose wife is a sister of 
Mrs. Clemens. A summer-house has been built 
for Mr. Clemens within the Crane grounds, on a 
high peak, which stands six hundred feet above 
the valley that lies spread out before it. The 
house is built almost entirely of glass, and is 
modeled exactly on the plan of a Mississippi 
steamboat's pilot-house. Here, shut off from all 
outside communication, Mr. Clemens does the 
hard work of the year, or rather the confining 
and engrossing work of writing, which demands 
continuous application, day after day. The lofty 
work-room is some distance from the house. He 
goes to it every morning about half-past eight 
and stays there until called to dinner by the blow- 
ing of a horn about five o'clock. He takes no 
lunch or noon meal of any sort, and works with- 
out eating, while the rules are imperative not to 
disturb him during this working period. His 
only recreation is his cigar. He is an inveterate 
smoker, and smokes constantly while at his work, 
and, indeed, all the time, from half-past eight in 
the morning to half-past ten at night, stopping 
only when at his meals. A cigar lasts him about 
forty minutes, now that he has reduced to an ex- 
act science the art of reducing the weed to ashes. 
So he smokes from fifteen to twenty cigars every 
day. Some time ago he was persuaded to stop 
the practice, and actually went a year and more 



S. L. CLEMENS {MARIC TWAIN). 67 

without tobacco ; but he found himself unable to 
carry along important work which he undertook, 
and it was not until he resumed smoking that he 
could do it. Since then his faith in his cigar has 
not wavered. Like other American smokers, Mr. 
Clemens is unceasing in his search for the really- 
satisfactory cigar at a really satisfactory price, 
and, first and last, has gathered a good deal of 
experience in the pursuit. It is related that, 
having entertained a party of gentlemen one win- 
ter evening in Hartford, he gave to each, just 
before they left the house, one of a new sort of 
cigar that he was trying to believe was the object 
of his search. He made each guest light it before 
starting. The next morning he found all that he 
had given away lying on the snow beside the 
pathway across his lawn. Each smoker had been 
polite enough to smoke until he got out of the 
house, but every one, on gaining his liberty, had 
yielded to the instinct of self-preservation and 
tossed the cigar away, forgetting that it would be 
found there by daylight. The testimony of the 
next morning was overwhelming, and the verdict 
against the new brand was accepted. 

At Elmira, Mr. Clemens works hard. He puts 
together there whatever may have been in his 
thoughts and recorded in his note-books during 
the rest of the year. It is his time of completing 
work begun, and of putting into definite shape 



68 S. L. CLEMENS {MARK TWAIN). 

what have been suggestions and possibilities. It 
is not his literary habit, however, to carry one 
line of work through from beginning to end be- 
fore taking up the next. Instead of that, he has 
always a number of schemes and projects going 
along at the same time, and he follows first one 
and then another, according as his mood inclines 
him. Nor do his productions come before the 
public always as soon as they are completed. 
He has been known to keep a book on hand for 
five years, after it was finished. But while the 
life at Elmira is in the main seclusive and system- 
atically industrious, that at Hartford, to which 
he returns in September, is full of variety and 
entertainment. His time is then less restricted, 
and he gives himself freely to the enjoyment of 
social life. He entertains many friends, and his 
hospitable house, seldom without a guest, is one 
of the literary centers of the city. Mr. Howells 
is a frequent visitor, as Bayard Taylor used to be. 
Cable, Aldrich, Henry Irving, Stanley, and many 
others of wide reputation, have been entertained 
there. The next house to Mr. Clemens's on the 
south is Charles Dudley Warner's home, and the 
next on the east is Mrs. Stowe's, so that the most 
famous three writers in Hartford live within a 
stone's throw of each other. 

At Hartford Mr. Clemens's hours of occupation 
are less systematized, but he is no idler there. 



S. L. CLEMENS {MARK TWAIN). 69 

At some times he shuts himself in his working- 
room and declines to be interrupted on any ac- 
count, though there are not wanting some among 
his expert billiard-playing friends to insist that 
this seclusion is merely to practice uninterrupt- 
edly while they are otherwise engaged. Cer- 
tainly he is a skillful player. He keeps a pair of 
horses, and rides more or less in his carriage, but 
does not drive, or ride on horseback. He is, 
however, an adept upon the bicycle. He has 
made its conquest a study, and has taken, and also 
experienced, great pains with the work. On his 
bicycle he travels a great deal, and he is also an 
indefatigable pedestrian, taking long walks across 
country, frequently in the company of his friend 
the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, at whose church 
(Congregational) he is a pew-holder and regular 
attendant. For years past he has been an indus- 
trious and extensive reader and student in the 
broad field of general culture. He has a large 
library and a real familiarity with it, extending 
beyond our own language into the literatures of 
Germany and France. He seems to have been 
fully conscious of the obligations which the suc- 
cessful opening of his literary career laid upon 
him, and to have lived up to its opportunities by 
a conscientious and continuous course of reading 
and study which supplements the large knowl- 
edge of human nature that the vicissitudes of his 



7© S. L. CLEMENS {MARK TWAIN). 

early life brought with them. His resources are 
not of the exhaustible sort. He is a member 
of (among other social organizations) the Mon- 
day Evening Club of Hartford, that was founded 
nearly twenty years ago by the Rev. Dr. Bush- 
nell, Dr. Henry, and Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, 
and others, with a membership limited to twenty. 
The club meets on alternate Monday evenings 
from October to May in the houses of the mem- 
bers. One person reads a paper and the others 
then discuss it ; and Mr. Clemens's talks there, 
as well as his daily conversation among friends, 
amply demonstrate the spontaneity and natural- 
ness of his irrepressible humor. 

His inventions are not to be overlooked in any 
attempt to outline his life and its activities. 
" Mark Twain's Scrap-Book " must be pretty well 
known by this time, for something like ioo,cxx) 
copies of it have been sold yearly for ten years 
or more. As he wanted a scrap-book, and could 
not find what he wanted, he made one himself, 
which naturally proved to be just what other peo- 
ple wanted. Similarly, he invented a note-book. 
It is his habit to record at the moment they occur to 
him such scenes and ideas as he wishes to preserve. 
All note-books that he could buy had the vicious 
habit of opening at the wrong place and distract- 
ing attention in that way. So, by a simple 
contrivance, he arranged one that always opens 
at the right place ; that is, of course, at the page 



S. L. CLEMENS {MARK TWAIN), 7^ 

last written upon. Other simple inventions by- 
Mark Twain include a vest which enables the 
wearer to dispense with suspenders ; a shirt, with 
collars and cuffs attached, which requires neither 
buttons nor studs ; a perpetual-calendar watch- 
charm, which gives the day of the week and of 
the month ; and a game whereby people may 
play historical dates and events upon a board, 
somewhat after the manner of cribbage, being a 
game whose ofifice is twofold — to furnish the 
dates and events, and to impress them perma- 
nently upon the memory. 

In 1885 Mark Twain and George W. Cable 
made a general tour of the country, each giving 
readings from his own works : and they had 
crowded houses and most cordial receptions. It 
was not a new sort of occupation for Mark Twain. 
Back in the early days, before his first book ap- 
peared, he delivered lectures in the Pacific States. 
His powers of elocution are remarkable, and he 
has long been considered by his friends one of 
the most satisfactory and enjoyable readers of 
their acquaintance. His parlor-reading of Shaks- 
peare and Browning is described as a masterly 
performance. He has hitherto refused to under- 
take any general course of public reading, though 
very strong inducements have been offered to 
him to go to the distant English colonies, even as 
far as Australia. 

Charles Hopkins Clark. 



72 S. L. CLEMENS {MARK TWAIN). 

[After the failure of the firm of Charles L. 
Webster & Co., of which he was a member, Mr. 
Clemens accomplished the Herculean task of dis- 
charging debts not legally his, by a lecture tour 
in this country and in Australia. On his return 
home, he was met in England by the sad news of 
the sudden death of his eldest daughter. After 
four more years in Europe, for the most part in 
Vienna, he came back to this country. The Hart- 
ford home was left unoccupied, partly on account 
of sad associations, and the family spent the 
winter in New York. They then leased a house 
at Riverdale on the Hudson, from where they 
will move to the new home at Tarrytown which 
Mr. Clemens has recently bought. — Editors.] 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 



73 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 

AT WEST NEW BRIGHTON 

It is not noticed that the most determined fight- 
ers, both in battle and on the field of public affairs, 
are often the gentlest, most peaceable men in pri- 
vate converse and at home. The public was for a 
long time accustomed to regard Mr. Curtis as a 
combatant ; but many who know of him in that 
character would have been surprised could they 
have met him in the quiet study on Staten Island, 
where his work was done. 

A calm, solid figure, of fine height and impres- 
sive carriage, a moderately ruddy complexion, with 
snowy side-whiskers, and gray hair parted at the 
crown, gave him somewhat the appearance that we 
conventionally ascribe to English country gentle- 
men. There was an air of repose about the sur- 
roundings and the occupant of the room where he 
worked. Over the door hung a mellowed and 
rarely excellent copy of the Stratford portrait of 
Shakspeare ; shelves filled with books — the dumb 
yet resistless artillery of literature — were placed 
in all the spaces between the three windows ; and 

75 



76 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 

Other books and pamphlets — the small arms and 
equipments — covered a part of the ample table. A 
soft-coal fire in the grate threw out intermittently 
its broad, genial flame, as if inspired to illumina- 
tion by the gaze of Emerson, or Daniel Webster, 
or the presence of blind Homer, whose busts were 
in an opposite corner. Altogether, the spot seemed 
very remote from all loud conflicts of the time. 
There was none of that confusion, that tempestuous 
disarray of newspapers, common in the workshops 
of editors. Yet an examination of the new books 
and documents which lay before him would show 
that Mr. Curtis established here a sluice-way 
through which was drawn a current of our chief lit- 
erature and politics ; and some of the lines in his 
massive lower face indicated the resoluteness 
which underlay his natural urbanity and kindness. 
Although his father came from Massachusetts and 
he himself was born in Providence, Mr. Curtis was 
identified with New York. In 1839, ^^ the age of 
fifteen, he moved with his father to this city. 
Three years later he enlisted with the Brook Farm 
enthusiasts, but in 1844 withdrew to Concord, as 
Hawthorne had done. There, with his brother, he 
worked at farming, and continued to study until 
1846, when he came back to New York, still bent 
upon preparing himself for a literary life, though 
he chose not to go to college. He went, instead, 
to Europe, remaining there and in the East for 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 77 

four years, six months of which he spent as a stu- 
dent at the University of Berlin. 

Bringing home copious materials for the work, 
he wrote the "Nile Notes of a Howadji," which 
the Harpers promptly accepted and published in 
185 1, the author being then twenty-seven. It is 
interesting to observe that he never went through 
that period of struggle to which most young writ- 
ers must submit; a fact presaging the almost un- 
broken success of his later career. His other two 
books of travel appeared the next year, and at the 
same time he began to divide with Donald G. 
Mitchell the writing of the " Easy Chair " in Har- 
pers Monthly y which he afterward took wholly upon 
himself and continued until his death. His con- 
nection with Harper s Weekly began in 1857, and 
for six years he supplied a series of papers en- 
titled "The Lounger" to that periodical. In 
1863 he became its political editor. Mean- 
while he had published "The Potiphar Papers," 
the one successful satire on social New York 
since Irving's " Salmagundi " ; also " Prue and I," 
and "Trumps," his only attempt at a novel. 
This, too, treats of New York life. Finally he 
married, in 1856, and settled on Staten Island, 
where he lived until he died in 1892, in a house 
only a few rods distant from that in which he was 
married. 

Yet, New Yorker as he was by long association, 



78 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 

residence and interest, he had a close relationship 
with Massachusetts; partly through his marriage 
into a Massachusetts family of note — the Shaws ; 
partly, perhaps, through the ties formed in those 
idyllic days at Brook Farm and Concord. And 
in Massachusetts he had another home, at Ashfield, 
to which he repaired every summer. It is an old 
farm-house on the outskirts of the village, which 
lies among beautiful maple-clad hills, between the 
Berkshire valley and the picturesque neighbor- 
hood of the Deerfields and Northampton. A num- 
ber of years ago, with his friend Charles Eliot 
Norton, Mr. Curtis aided in founding a library for 
Ashfield, and he was so much of a favorite with 
his neighbors there, that they were anxious to 
make him their representative in Congress. He, 
however, seemed to prefer their friendship, and 
the glorious colors of their autumn woods, to their 
votes. Throughout the greater part of the fierce 
presidential campaign of 1884 Mr. Curtis con- 
ducted his voluminous work as editor and as in- 
dependent chieftain in this quiet retreat. In 1875 
it was to him that Concord turned when seeking 
an orator for the centenary of her famous 
" Fight " ; and it was he again whom Boston, in 
the spring of 1883, invited to pronounce the 
eulogy upon Wendell Phillips. These are rather 
striking instances of Massachusetts dependence 
on a New York author and orator, discrepant 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 79 

fronv a theory which makes the dependence all 
the other way. 

But Mr. Curtis long since gained national repu- 
tation as a lecturer. His first venture in that line 
was ** Contemporary Art in Europe," in 1851; 
then he fairly got under way with '' The Age of 
Steam," and soon became one of that remarkable 
group, including Starr King, Phillips and Beecher, 
who built up the lyceum into an important insti- 
tution, and went all over the country lecturing. 
Mr. Curtis gave lectures every winter until 1872. 
I remember his saying, some time before that, " I 
have to write and deliver at least one sermon a 
year "; and indeed they were sermons, of the most 
eloquent kind, rife with noble incitements to duty, 
patriotism, lofty thought, ideal conduct. In 1859, 
at Philadelphia, having long before engaged to 
speak on *' The Present State of the Anti-Slavery 
Question," he was told that it would not be 
allowed. Many people entreated him not to at- 
tempt it ; but, while disclaiming any wish to 
create disturbance or to be martyred, he stated 
that he found himself forced to represent the 
principle of free speech, and that nothing could 
induce him to shrink from upholding it. Accord- 
ingly he began his lecture from a platform guard- 
ed by double rows of police. A tumult was 
raised in the hall, and a mob attacked the build- 
ing simultaneously from without, intending to sei^e 



So GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 

the speaker and hang him. For twenty minutes 
he waited silently, while vitriol-bottles and brick- 
bats were showered through the windows, and the 
police fought the rioters in both hall and street. 
The disturbance quelled, he went on for an hour, 
saying all that he had to say, amid alternate hisses 
and applause, and with the added emphasis of mis- 
siles from lingering rioters smashing the window 
glass. Is it surprising that this man should have 
the courage to rise and shout out a solitary " No," 
against the hundreds of a State convention, or that 
he should have dared to " bolt " the Presidential 
nomination of his party, in spite of jeers and 
sneers and cries of treachery } 

Mr. Curtis 's adversaries, in whatever else they 
may have been right, were apt to make two serious 
mistakes about him. One was, that they considered 
him a dilettante in politics ; the other, that they over- 
looked his *' staying-power." For over thirty-four 
years he not only closely studied and wrote upon our 
politics, but he also took an active share in them. 

For twenty-five years he was the chairman of a 
local Republican committee; he made campaign 
speeches; he sat in conventions; he influenced 
thousands of votes. Moreover, his views tri- 
umphed. They did so in the anti-slavery cause; 
they did so in the Civil Service Reform movement, 
and in the Independent movement of 1884. Surely 
that is not the record of a dilettante. He never 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. Si 

pulled wires, nor did he seek office ; that is all. 
Once he ran for Congress in a Democratic district, 
sure of defeat, but wishing to have a better chance, 
as candidate, for speech-making. He took the 
chairmanship of the Civil Service Advisory Board 
as an imperative duty, and resigned it as soon as 
he saw its futility under President Grant's rule. 
Seward wanted to make him Consul- General in 
Egypt; Mr. Hayes offered him the mission to 
England, and again that to Germany; but he re- 
fused each one. His only political ambition was 
to instil sound principles, and to oppose practical 
patriotism to " practical politics." Honorary dis- 
tinctions he was willing to accept, in another field. 
He was an LL.D. of Harvard, Brown and Madison 
universities ; and in 1 864 he was appointed a Re- 
gent of the University of New York, in the line 
of succession to John Jay, Chancellor Kent and 
Gulian Verplanck. This, it seems to me, was a very 
fit association, for Mr. Curtis was attached by his 
qualities of integrity and refinement to the best 
representatives of New York. The idea often oc- 
curs to one, that he, more than any one else, con- 
tinued the example which Washington Irving set; 
an example of kindliness and good-nature blended 
with indestructible dignity, and of a delicately im- 
aginative mind consecrating much of its energy to 
public service. 

A teacher of a true State policy, rather than a 



82 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 

statesman — an inspiring leader, more than he was 
an organizer or executant — he yet did much hard 
work in organizing, and tried to perpetuate the de- 
sirable tradition that culture should be joined to 
questions of right in Government, and of the popu- 
lar weal. Twenty years a lecturer, without rest ; 
twenty- five years a political editor ; thirty-six years 
the suave and genial occupant of the " Easy Chair" ; 
always steadfast to the highest aims, and ignoring 
unworthy slurs ; — may we not say reasonably that 
he had " staying power " ? One source of it was 
to be found in the serene cheer of his family life in 
that Staten Island cottage to which he clung so 
closely, and among the well-loved Ashfield hills, 
where he long continued to show that power. 
George Parsons Lathrop. 



DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON 



83 



DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON 

AT LAKE GEORGE 

Owl's Nest, the summer retreat of Dr. Edward 
Eggleston, is picturesquely situated on Dunham's 
Bay, an arm of Lake George that deeply indents 
the land on the southeastern shore of the lake. 
This site was chosen partly because the land 
hereabout is owned by his son-in-law, and partly 
because of the seclusion the place affords from 
the main current of summer business and travel. 
With the utmost freedom of choice, a spot better 
suited to the needs of a literary worker with a 
family could hardly have been selected within 
the entire thirty-six miles covering the length of 
Lake George. Here, a few years ago, among 
black rocks, green woods, and blue waters, all per- 
vaded by the breath of balsam, cedar, and pine, 
the author of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," after 
various flights to other northern places of resort, 
built the nest which he has since continued to 
occupy during six months of the year (with the 
exception of one year spent abroad), and in 
which he does the better part of his literary work, 
with material about him prepared at his winter 

85 



86 DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON, 

home in Brooklyn. Owl's Nest (doubtless jocose- 
ly so-called because of the utter absence from it 
of everything owlish) consists of three architect- 
urally unique and tasteful buildings, occupying a 
natural prominence on the western shore of the 
bay. One, the family cottage, is a handsome- 
looking and commodious structure of wood, lib- 
erally furnished in a manner becoming the ar- 
tistic and literary proclivities of its occupants. A 
little below this, to the right, and nearer the lake 
shore, is a summer boarding-house, built by the 
owner of the farm for the accommodation of the 
friends and admirers of Dr. Eggleston, who an- 
nually follow his flight into the country — so im- 
possible, as it would seem, is it to escape the con- 
sequences of fame. The third and most striking 
structure upon the grounds is Dr. Eggleston's 
workshop and library — his lasting and peculiar 
mark on the shores of Lake George, and the most 
prominent and elaborate piece of work of its kind 
to be found anywhere in northern New York. 
This was laid out by a Springfield, Mass., archi- 
tect, after plans of the proprietor's own. It is 
built of brown sandstone quarried on the spot, 
and laid by local stone-workers, finished in native 
chestnut and cherry by home mechanics, and dec- 
orated without with designs, and within with 
carvings, by the hand of the author's artist-daugh- 
ter, Allegra. Thus are secured for it at once a 



DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON, 87 

sturdy native character of its own, and a sylvan 
harmony and grace most pleasing to the fancy. 
Within this stronghold are arranged in due order 
the weapons of the literary champion — historian, 
novelist, and essayist — as well as the tools of his 
daughter, who has long been working in conjunc- 
tion with her father in the production of the illus- 
trated novel, " The Graysons," given to the world 
in 1888. 

It is into this stronghold that one is conducted 
on a Sunday afternoon, after the usual hearty 
hand-shake ; especially if one's visit relates in any 
way to things literary, or to questions that are 
easiest settled in an atmosphere of books. You 
are led through a door opening at the rear of the 
building, toward the cottage ; immediately op- 
posite to which, upon entering, appears the en- 
trance to the artist's studio ; thence along a narrow 
passage traversing the length of the west wall and 
lined to the ceiling with books, through a door- 
way concealed by a pair of heavy dropping cur- 
tains, and into the author's study, occupying the 
south end of the building. Here you are seated 
in a soft chair beside a deep, red brick fireplace 
(adorned with andirons and other appurtenances 
of ancient pattern, captured from some old colo- 
nial mansion), and before a modern bay-window 
opening to the south. 

This window is, structurally, the chief glory and 



88 DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 

ornament of Dr. Eggleston's study — broad, deep, 
and high, filling fully one-third of the wall-space 
in the south end, and so letting into the room, 
as it were, a good portion of all out-doors. From 
this window is obtained a charming view of the 
finest points in the surrounding scenery. Directly 
in front stretches out for miles to the southward 
a broad expanse of marsh, through which winds 
in sinuous curves a sluggish creek that ends its 
idling course where the line of blue water meets 
the rank green of the swale. Just here extends 
from shore to shore a long causeway of stone and 
timber, over which runs the highway through the 
neighborhood. Flanking the morass on each side 
are two parallel lines of mountains, looking blue 
and hazy and serene on a still day, but marvel- 
ously savage and wild and threatening when a 
storm is raging. These are, respectively, the 
French Mountain spur on the west ; and on the 
east a long chain of high peaks, which begins 
with the Sugar Loaf, three miles inland, ap- 
proaches the eastern shore, and forms with the 
grand peaks of Black, Buck and Finch mountains 
a magnificent border to the lake as far down as 
the Narrows, where it terminates in the bold and 
picturesque rock of Tongue Mountain. 

This view constitutes almost the whole outlook 
from the spot, which is otherwise encroached upon 
by an intricate tangle of untamed nature — woods, 



DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 8^ 

cliffs and ravines, that back it up on the west, and 
flank it on either side down to the water's edge. 
Turning from the view of things outside to con- 
sider the things within, you find yourself, apart 
from the necessary furniture of the room, walled 
in by books, to apparently interminable heights 
and lengths. I think Dr. Eggleston told me he 
has here something like four thousand volumes, 
perhaps one-fourth of which may be classed as 
general literature ; the rest being volumes old and 
new, of ever conceivable date, style and condition, 
bearing upon the subject of colonial history. 
These have been gathered at immense pains 
from the libraries and bookstalls of Europe and 
America. In his special field of work Dr. Eggle- 
ston long ago proved himself a profound student 
and a thorough and successful operator. But if 
books tire you, there is at hand a most interesting 
collection of souvenirs of foreign travel — pictures, 
casts, quaint manuscripts, etc. — besides rare auto- 
graphs, curios, and relics of every sort, gathered 
from everywhere, all of which he shows you with 
every effort and desire to entertain. In common 
with other distinguished persons, Dr. Eggleston 
has undergone persecution by the inveterate col- 
lector of autographs. One claimant for a speci- 
men of his penmanship, writing from somewhere 
in the Dominion, solicited a "few lines" to adorn 
his album withal ; whereupon he went to his desk 



9^ DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 

and, taking a blank sheet, drew with pen and ink 
two parallel black lines across it, added his signa- 
ture, and mailed it promptly to the enclosed 
address. 

The work upon which Dr. Eggleston is engaged 
(" Life in the Thirteen Colonies ") has already oc- 
cupied him over six years, and he estimates that 
it will be nearly six years more ere it is completed. 
Chapters of it have been appearing from time to 
time, during its composition, in The Century v^d^^- 
azine ; and the first completed volume is now in 
the possession of The Century Co. for early publi- 
cation. It is distinctively a history of the people 
in their struggle for empire ; recording to the 
minutest details their public and domestic life 
and affairs, treating exhaustively of their manners, 
customs, politics, wars, religion, manufactures, and 
agriculture, showing in what they failed and in 
what succeeded. All this is wrought out in a 
vivid style, and possesses the interest and vigor 
of a romance. This has been his chief work. 
Otherwise he has contributed to the periodicals a 
large number of essays, short stories, etc., and 
has lately (by way of recreation) prepared a 
youth's history of the American settlements, for 
school use. His working-hours are from eight in 
the morning till two in the afternoon, during 
which time he sticks to his desk, where he is to 
be found every day except Sunday, apparently 



DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 91 

hopelessly entangled in a thicket of notes and 
references, in manuscript and in print, which besets 
him on all sides. But to the worker there, each 
stack is a trusted tool on which he lays his hand 
unerringly when it is wanted. He has perfected 
a system of note-making which reduces the labor 
of reference to a minimum, while a type-writer 
performs for him the mechanical part of the work. 
His afternoons are given to socialities and recrea- 
tion. His four little grandchildren come in for a 
large share of his leisure time ; and it is a good 
thingto see them all rolling together on the study 
floor and making the place ring with their merri- 
ment. 

I have seen in one of the older anthologies a 
poem entitled "The Helper," of which I remember 
these words : 

" There was a man, a prince among his kind, 
And he was called the Helper," 

These verses, ever since I read them, have had 
a certain fascination for me. There is that in 
them suggestive of the flavor of rare old wine. 
There are helpers and helpers, from some types of 
which we pray evermore to be delivered. But 
there are the true, the born helpers, whom those 
in need of effectual advice and furtherance should 
as heartily pray to fall into the way of. These 
last do not always appear duly classified, labeled 
and shelved, to be taken down in answer to all 



9* DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 

trivial and promiscuous complaints, since, as has 
been noted, the true helper always proceeds, not 
by system, but by instinct, which through practice 
becomes in him unerring, and sufficient to guide 
him without stumbling. Such a helper is Edward 
Egglcston. He is a philanthropist who exists 
chiefly for the sake of doing good to his fellows, 
and who grows fat in doing it. It is a destiny 
from which he can not escape, and would not if 
he could. 

One who observes rnuch has often to deplore 
the absence from our modern life and institutions 
of any sphere large enough for the exercise and 
display of the full sum of the powers and faculties 
of any of our recent or contemporary great men 
of the people. Compare one of our most gifted 
men with the stage upon which he is compelled 
to act, and the disproportion is startling. How 
much that is above price is thus lost beyond re- 
covery, and often how little we get from such 
beyond the results of some special popular 
talent, perhaps itself not representative of the 
strongest faculties of the person. I first got ac- 
quainted with Dr. Eggleston through his novels 
" The Circuit Rider " and *' Roxy," and being then 
in the novel-reading phase of intellectual devel- 
opment, I of course believed them unrivaled in 
contemporary literature, as they fairly are of their 
kind. My enthusiasm lasted till I heard him 



DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 93 

preach from the pulpit, and straightway my ad- 
miration for the writer was lost in astonishment 
at the preacher. Never had I heard such ser- 
mons ; and I still believe I never have. But upon 
closer acquaintance, my astonishment at the 
preacher was swallowed up in wonder at the con- 
versational powers of my new friend. Never had 
I heard such a talker — never have I heard such a 
one. But the best unveiling was the last, when I 
discovered under all these multifarous aspects the 
characteristics and attributes of a born philan- 
thropist. Hitherto I had known only the writer, 
the preacher, and the talker ; now I began to 
know the man. 

In Paris, London, Venice, Florence, in the re- 
mote towns and villages of England and the Con- 
tinent, wherever it has been the fortune of Dr. 
Eggleston to pitch his tent for a season, his domi- 
cile has everywhere been known and frequented 
by those in need of spiritual or material comfort ; 
and few of such have ever had occasion to comr 
plain of failure in getting their reasonable wants 
satisfied. In these dispensations he has the 
warmest encouragement and support of Mrs. Eg- 
gleston and their daughters, by whom these 
beautiful and humane traits are fully shared. I 
once expressed my wonder as to how, amidst the 
severest professional labors, he could stand so 
much of this extraneous work, without detriment 



94 DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 

to his constitution. " What ! do you call that 
work?" was the characteristic answer. Fortu- 
nately a splendid physique defeats the ill-effects 
that would seem inevitable. And indeed every 
literary man should possess the nerves of a farmer 
and the physique of a prize-fighter as a natural 
basis of success. Dr. Eggleston is a good sailor 
and an expert climber, and with these accomplish- 
ments, and a perpetually cheerful humor, he 
manages to keep his body in trim. He can row 
you out to Joshua's Rock, or to Caldwell, if that 
lies in your way ; or lead you with unerring pre- 
cision through tangled labyrinths, to visit the 
choice nooks and scenes of the neighborhood, 
such as the lovely Paradise, the dark Inferno, and 
the mysterious Dark Brook. 

There is something broadly and deeply elemen- 
tal in Dr. Eggleston's joyous appreciation of na- 
ture, his touching love of little children, and his 
insight into the springs of animal life. His home 
habits are simple and beautiful, abounding in all 
the Christian graces, courtesies, and cordialities 
which help to maintain the ideal household. 
Everybody knows something of his personal ap- 
pearance, if not by sight, then by report — the 
great bulk of frame, the large leonine head, now 
slightly grizzled, the deep, sharp, kindly eyes, the 
movements deliberate but not slow; and more, 
perhaps, of his conversation — precise, rapid, mul- 



DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 95 

tifarious, swarming with ideas and the sugges- 
tions of things which the rapidity of his utterance 
prevents him from elaborating — original, opulent 
of forms, rich in quotation and allusion. And 
then the laugh — vast, inspiriting, uplifting. But 
there is such a thing as friendship becoming too 
friendly ! 

O. C. AURINGER. 



[Nearly a third of Dr. Eggleston's mature life 
has been covered by the period since this article 
was written, and during this period his most fin- 
ished literary work has been produced. "The 
Faith Doctor," his last novel, was published in 
1 89 1 ; a few years later two school readers for 
young children, " Stories of American Life and 
Adventure " and " Stories of Great Americans for 
Little Americans " appeared. These books the 
author estimates highly. In 1 899 " The Beginners 
of a Nation" was published, and in 1901 "The 
Transit of Civilization," — the crowning labor of his 
life and the outcome of historical researches which 
he has been carrying on for twenty years. The 
year just past has been devoted to the preparation 
of a new school history of the United States. Dr. 
Eggleston's health is unstable, and he may not 
continue his writing, but he has in contemplation 
a volume relating to life in the United States in 



96 ' DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 

the seventeenth century, and also a somewhat 
autobiographical work, not so much concerning 
himself as phases of life that he has seen. — 
Editors.] 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE 



97 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE 

ON ROXBURY HEIGHTS, BOSTON 

The pulpit of Boston — what a fellowship of 
goodly names the phrase recalls ! Knotty old 
stub-twist Cotton Mather, 

" With his wonderful inkhorn at his side "; 

saintly EUery Channing ; courtly Edward Ever- 
ett ; soaring Emerson ; sledge-hammer Beecher, 
pere ; Parker, the New England Luther; golden- 
mouthed Starr King ; mystic. Oriental Weiss ; 
Freeman Clarke — steady old *' Saint James "; 
Father Taylor, the Only ; quaint, erratic Bartol, 
the last of the Transcendentalists ; impetuous 
Phillips Brooks ; and manly, practical Everett 
Hale. Can you measure the light they have 
spread around — its range, its brilliancy ? The 
Christian pulpit of Boston has been a diadem of 
light to half the world. It has been distinctively 
not an ecclesiastical, but a patriotic, educational, 
and intellectual force. Yet, out of the whole 
cluster of preacher-authors, one can strictly claim 
for literature only our American Kingsley — Ed- 
ward Everett Hale. It is not so much by war- 

99 

LofC. 



lOO EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 

rant of his studies in Spanish history that we 
class him among the literati — although in some 
degree he has proved the successor of Prescott 
in this field, and has lately prepared " The 
Story of Spain " for Putnam's Nations Series ; but 
it is in virtue of his novels, his help-stories for 
young folks, and his books of travel. 

Mr. Hale's home is in Roxbury (the " High- 
land " region), five-minutes' ride, by steam car, 
from the heart of Boston. " Rocksbury," as it 
was spelled in the old documents, is a rocky and 
craggy place, as its name indicates. If you are 
curious to know where the rocks came from, just 
turn to Dr. Holmes's " Dorchester Giant," and 
read about that plum-pudding, as big as the 
State House dome, which was demolished by the 
giant's wife and screaming boys : 

" They flung it over to Roxbury hills. 
They flung it over the plain, 
And all over Milton and Dorchester too . 
Great lumps of pudding the giants threw ; 
They tumbled as thick as rain." 

Speaking of rocks, there is still to be seen, 
hardly a stone's-throw beyond Mr. Hale's resi- 
dence, a natural Cyclopean wall — sheer, somber, 
Dantesque, overgrown with wilding shrubs, the 
rocks cramped and locked together in the joints 
and interspaces by the contorted roots of huge 
black and scarlet oaks, which, directly they 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. loi 

emerge from the almost perpendicular cliff, turn 
and shoot straight up toward the zenith. On the 
summit of these rocks is the Garrison residence, 
presented to the anti-slavery agitator by his ad- 
mirers, and now the home of his son, Mr. Francis 
J. Garrison. Other neighbors of Mr. Hale are 
William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., and the venerable 
Charles K. Dillaway, President of the Boston 
Latin School Association, and master of the 
school fifty years ago, when young Hale was 
conjugating his rvntoo tvtpoo on its old teetering 
settees. Mr. Dillaway bears his years well, and 
recently celebrated his golden wedding. They 
have a well-combed and fruity look, these old 
walled and terraced lawns and gardens of steep 
Roxbury Height. In the Loring, the Hallowell, 
and the Auchmuty houses, and in Shirley Hall, 
there yet remain traces of the slave-holding Puri- 
tan aristocracy of two centuries ago. The Hale 
residence, by its old-time hugeness and architec- 
tural style, seems as if it ought to be storied in a 
double sense ; but it really has no history other 
than that which its present occupant is giving it. 
It is none too large for one who has seen grow 
up in it a family of five sons and a daughter, — 
none too large (if one may judge from the plethoric 
library) for its owner's ever-growing collection of 
books and manuscripts. The house, which is of 
a cream color with salmon facings, is set back 



I02 EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 

from the street some fifty feet, affording a small 
front lawn, divided from the sidewalk by a row 
of trees. The second-story front windows are 
beneath the roof of the great Doric porch, and 
between the pillars of this porch clamber the five- 
leaved woodbine and the broad-leaved aristolo- 
chia, or Dutchman's pipe. It is characteristic of 
Mr. Hale that he supports in his Roxbury home 
an old, an almost decrepit man-servant, who has 
lived with him for half a lifetime, and may be, for 
all I know, the original of '' My Double." A pic- 
ture of this " Old Retainer " was exhibited by 
Mr. Hale's daughter this year in the Paris Salon, 
over the title of " A New England Winter." I 
may, perhaps, be pardoned for mentioning, in this 
connection, that Mrs. Hale is, on the mother's 
side, a Beecher~the niece of Henry Ward 
Beecher — and inherits the moral enthusiasm of 
that religious family. 

To return to Mr. Hale. As for his library, it 
may be said that, like his own exterior, his think- 
ing-shop is plain and little adorned. It is his 
nacre shell lined with the fair pearl of his thought. 
The room is just back of one of the large front 
drawing-rooms, and ''gives " upon a little cul-de- 
sac of a side-street. It is a small room, and is 
crammed with plain bookshelves and cases of 
drawers. In this room most of Mr. Hale's writ- 
ing is done. He has a good collection of books 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 103 

and maps relating to Spanish-American subjects. 
Among these is a facsimile of Cortez's autograph 
map of Lower California, made for Mr. Hale by 
order of the Spanish Government from the orig- 
inal copy preserved in the national archives. 

Mr. Hale being, by his own frequent confessions, 
the most terribly be-bored man in the universe, 
and having always had a hankering after Syba- 
ritic islands where map-peddlers, book agents, 
and pious beggars might never mark his flight to 
do him wrong, it seemed providential, in a two- 
fold sense, that a wealthy friend in Roger Wil- 
liams's city, the writer of a work on the labor 
question, should have carried out the brilliant 
idea of building the hard-worked author a sum- 
mer retreat in the soft sea-air of Rhode Island. 
For the dreary romance of the Newport region — 
its vast, warm, obliterating Gulf Stream fogs, and 
the crusty lichens that riot and wax fat in the 
moisty strength thereof, the warm tints of rock 
and sky, naiad caves and tangled wrack and shell, 
and reveries by fire of flotage wood — you must 
peep into Colonel Higginson's " Oldport Days" 
or Mr. Hale's " Christmas in Narragansett." The 
latter book is full of charming description and 
autobiographical chit-chat. Manuntuck, where 
for twelve years the Hales have summered, is a 
little hamlet to the south of Newport and far 
down on the opposite side of the bay. It is six 



I04 EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 

or eight miles from anywhere ; it is almost at the 
jumping-off point; if the organizer of charities 
gets there, he will either have to walk or hire a 
team. The real southern limit of New England, 
according to Mr. Hale, is formed by a certain 
"long comb of little hills, of which the ends are 
gray stones separate from each other." On a 
high ridge of these hills is Colonel Ingham's 
cottage. In front of the house is the geological 
beach, about a mile and a half wide. In good 
weather Montauk Point — the end of Long Island 
— is visible, as is also Gay's Head on Martha's 
Vineyard. Just back of the house is a lovely 
lake, and further back are other lakes bordered by 
swamps filled with pink and white rhododendrons, 
and many plants interesting to botanists. It is 
the region dwelt in of old by the Narragansett In- 
dians. The swamp where in 1675 the great bat- 
tle was fought is not far away. The Indians 
called the region Pettaquamscut. 

Mr. Hale is not reserved about himself in his 
books. But in his fictitious writings you must 
beware of taking him too literally. He hates to 
wear his heart upon his sleeve. When you imagine 
that at last he is standing before you in propria 
persond — whish ! he claps on his magic cap, 
with a thimbleful of fern-seed sewed in it, and 
fades from your sight or recognition. He has re- 
cently told us of his habits of work, and how he 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 105 

sleeps and eats. What he says goes far toward 
explaining how he can throw off such amazing 
quantities of work. A man who eats five times a 
day, sleeps nine hours (including, with tolerable 
regularity, an hour after dinner), and takes plenty 
of out-door exercise, can perform as much as half 
a dozen dyspeptic, half-starved night-moths. Mr. 
Hale, it seems, does his writing and thinking 
in the lump, working his way regularly by a dead 
lift of three hours a day — inclusive, often, of a 
half or a full hour's bout before breakfast — the 
early work based upon a FriiJistilck of coffee and 
biscuit. Another secret of his power to produce 
work is his habit of getting others, especially 
young people, to work for him. For at least thir- 
teen years he has employed an amanuensis for a 
part of his writings. If he wishes to edit, in com- 
pact shape, certain hearty and relishing old narra- 
tives, he sets his young friends to reading for 
him, and by their joint labors the work is done. 
His ''Family Flight " series of travels (which we 
are given to understand has been quite success- 
ful) is the joint work of himself and his traveled 
sister. In short, he takes all the help he can get, 
printed or personal, for whatever writing he has on 
hand. Mr. Hale takes his exercise chiefly by 
walking, or in the horse-cars, as business or pro- 
fessional duty calls him hither and thither. As a 
hunger-producer the average suburban horse-car 



Io6 EDWARD EVERET2' HALE, 

line of Boston is scarcely excelled by a corduroy 
road or a mud avenue of New Orleans ; and the 
bracing sea-air of the Boston Highlands adds its 
whet and stimulant. 

When a young man of eighteen, Hale had the 
same fluent speech, the same gift of telling, im- 
promptu oratory, that makes him to-day so much 
sought after as the spokesman of this cause and 
that. He likes to be at a meeting of the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society, or the Oriental So- 
ciety at Worcester, but finds it not profitable or 
possible regularly to attend clubs or ministers* 
meetings. Like the two earthenware pots float- 
ing down the stream of ^sop's fable, there are in 
Mr. Hale's nature two clashing master-traits — the 
social, humanitarian, and democratic instinct, and 
the dignified reserve and exclusiveness of the 
Edward Everett strain in his blood. He is a tre- 
mendous social magnet turning now its attracting 
and now its repelling pole to the world ; to-day 
bringing comfort and hope to a score of drown- 
ing wretches, and to-morrow barricading himself 
in his study and sending off to the printer pas- 
sionate and humorous invectives against the in- 
effable brood of the world's bores. It is natur- 
ally, therefore, a rather formidable matter for a 
stranger to get access to the penetralia of the 
Roxbury mansion. 

A certain lady friend of Mr. Hale's was much 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 



107 



disturbed by the above statement when it first 
appeared in The Critic. She affirms that the 
Doctor is a very approachable man. The follow- 
ing quotation from a letter of her niece (who, out 
of friendship for Mr. Hale, gives part of her time 
to helping him in his work) certainly seems irre- 
futable testimony in her favor: — "I was at Mr. 
Hale's to-day from eleven to one o'clock. He 
receives an immense number of letters on all 
sorts of subjects, particularly charity undertak- 
ings, and we register them for him (I with three 
other girls) in a blank-book, so that he can refer 
to them at any time. He is very methodical ; he 
is, indeed, a wonderful man, and you can realize 
the vast amount of work he does, by sitting an 
hour in the room with him and hearing ring after 
ring at the front door. One man wants a place 
as coachman ; then comes a woman wishing a let- 
ter of introduction ; and I could fill a page with 
the different requests, all listened to with so much 
patience, and immediately attended to." Yet I 
know of a man who called five times in the vain 
endeavor to see Mr. Hale and get him to marry 
him. At last, in his despair, he went to a friend 
of the "Colonel's," a lady who bravely volun- 
teered to storm the castle in the prospective 
bridegroom's behalf. She effected her object by 
calling with the couple at six o'clock in the morn- 



io8 EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 

ing, yet felt sure she got a masterly beshrewing 
for her pains! 

Mr. Hale's plain dressing is said to be some- 
thing of a grievance to certain well-meaning mem- 
bers of his congregation, but it is an indispens- 
able part of his personality, and is, I doubt not, 
adopted for moral example as much as from in- 
herent dislike of show and sham. I have a pic- 
ture in my mind now of Mr. Hale as I saw him 
crossing the Harvard College yard, one Com- 
mencement Day, in a by-no-means glossy suit of 
black, and wearing the inevitable soft slouch hat. 
A work-worn, weary, and stooping figure it was, 
the body slightly bent, as if from supporting such 
a weight of head. There are certain photographs 
of Hale in which I see the powerful profile of 
Huntington, the builder of the Central Pacific 
Railroad. 

Mr. Hale believes in the American people most 
heartily, and holds them to have been always in 
advance of their political leaders. He is full of 
plans for social betterments and the discomfiture 
of the devil's regiments of the line. In fact he 
has too much of this kind of flax on his distaff for 
his own good. One of his hobbies being cheap 
and good literature for the people, he is thor- 
oughly in sympathy with the Chautauqua system 
of popular instruction. He delivered an address 
at the Framingham meeting not very long ago. 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 109 

and is one of the Counselors of the Literary and 
Scientific Circle. His idea of popular instruction 
is in some respects fully realized in this great 
Chautauqua organization, with its grove and 
Hall of Philosophy, its Assembly, its annual 
reunions, and central and local reading-circles^ 
affording to each of its thousands of readers the 
college-student's general outlook upon the world. 
Speaking of Mr. Hale's democratic sympathies, 
it is worthy of record here that when Walt Whit- 
man published his first quarto, and the press in 
general was howling with derision over that 
remarkable trumpet-blast, Edward Everett Hale 
discovered the stamp of genius and manly power 
in it, and reviewed it favorably in The North 
American Review, (It must be remembered that 
the first quarto of Whitman did not include the 
poems on sex. These were of later production.) 
It is characteristic of him that he has said that 
although he has not seen that notice since its ap- 
pearance in the Review in 1856, he thinks he 
would nevertheless stand by every word of it to- 
day. 

W. S. Kennedy. 

[Within a year or two Dr. Hale has resigned his 
duties of pastor to Prof. Edward Cummings of 
Harvard University, and is free to enjoy the life 
of busy leisure which he has so richly earned. — 
Editors.] 



JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS (UNCLE 

REMUS) 



III 



JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS (UNCLE 
REMUS) 

AT ATLANTA 

Joel Chandler Harris is at home in a neat 
cottage of the familiar Southern type, which 
nestles near the bosom of a grove of sweet gum 
and pine trees in the little village of West Point, 
about three miles from the heart of the ''Southern 
Chicago," as Georgians delight to call Atlanta. In 
the grove a mocking-bird family sings. Around 
the house are a few acres of ground, which are 
carefully cultivated. In one corner graze a group 
of beautiful Minerva-eyed Jerseys. At one side 
of the house hives of bees are placed near a flower 
garden sloping down to the street, which passes 
in front of the house several rods distant. At the 
foot of the road is a bubbling mineral spring, 
whose sparkling water supplies the needs of the 
household. A superb English mastiff eyes with 
dignified glance the casual visitor whose coming 
is apt to be announced by the bark of two of the 
finest dogs in the country, one a bulldog, the 
other a white English bull-terrier, Mr. Harris's 

113 



114 JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS {UNCLE REMUS). 

neighbors are few, but one who is his closest 
friend calls for mention. It is Mr. Evan P. Howell, 
whose manor is across the way. He is a member 
of a distinguished Georgia family, whose name is 
known at the North through Howell Cobb, a 
former Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Howell 
himself has become known to the general public 
as having declined the Manchester Consulate to 
retain his present position as chief editor and 
owner of the Atlanta ConstitutioUy in whose pages, 
by Mr. Howell's persuasion, Uncle Remus made 
his first appearancee. The interior of the cottage 
is simple and unassuming. Bric-a-brac and trum- 
pery " articles of bigotry and virtue " are absent. 
The places they generally occupy are taken up 
with wide windows and generous hearths. Of 
literary litter there is none. There are few books, 
but they have been read and re-read, and they 
are the best of books. The house is not a library, 
a museum, nor an art-gallery, but it is evidently a 
home in which children take the place of inani- 
mate objects of devotion. 

It is natural that Mr. Harris's home should be 
simple, and call for little elaborate description. 
He was born and brought up among simple, sin- 
cere people, whose wants were few, whose tastes 
were easily satisfied, whose lives were natural and 
untainted by any such influences as make for 
cerebral hyperaemia, or other neurasthenic com- 



JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS {UNCLE REMUS). 115 

plaints incidental, as Dr. Hammond says, to 
modern city life. The village of Eatonton, in 
Middle Georgia, was Mr. Harris's birth-place. 
Since Mr. Henry Watterson, in his book on 
Southern humor, and other writers, have made 
Mr. Harris an older man than he really is, it is 
well to state, as " official," that he was born on 
the 9th of December, 1848. Eatonton is a small 
town now, but it was smaller then. It was sur- 
rounded by plantations, and on one of these Mr. 
Harris spent his earliest years as other Southern 
children do. At six he began to read. Among 
the first of his literary acquaintances was the de- 
lightful " Vicar of Wakefield." The boy's school- 
ing was such as reading the best of the authors of 
the periods of Queen Anne and the Georges, and 
a few terms at the Eatonton Academy, could give. 
He read his text-books, but was bitterly opposed 
to getting them by heart. When he was about 
twelve years old an incident occurred which shaped 
his whole life. The Eatonton postmaster kept a 
sort of general store — the " country store " of 
New England, — and its frequenters were at liberty 
to read the copies of the Milledgeville and other 
rural papers which were taken by subscribers. 
In one of these. The Countryman, young Harris 
found that it was edited by a Mr. Turner, whose 
acquaintance he had made not very long before, 
and he thrilled with the thought that he knew a 



ii6 JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS {UNCLE REMUS). 

real editor. Finding that a boy was wanted he 
wrote for the place, secured it, and soon learned 
all that was to be gathered in so small an office. 
In addition to this acquirement of knowledge, by 
the permission of Mr. Turner, he had access to 
a library of three thousand volumes, which he 
read under the judicious guidance of their owner. 
Among these books he lived for several years in 
the very heart of the agricultural region, and he 
pondered over his reading to the music of the 
clicking types, with the scamper of the cat-squir- 
rels over the roof and the patter of the acorns 
dropped by the jay-birds. For amusement he 
hunted rabbits with a pack of half-bred harriers, 
or listened to the tales of the plantation Negro, 
who was there to be found in primitive perfection 
of type. It was on the Turner plantation that 
the original Uncle Remus told his stories to the 
little boy. So it was that he absorbed the won- 
derfully complete stores of knowledge of the 
Negro which have since given him fame. He 
heard the Negro's stories and enjoyed them, ob- 
served his characteristics and appreciated them. 
Time went on. The printer boy set type, read 
books, hunted rabbits, 'possums, and foxes, was 
seized with an ambition to write, and had begun 
to do so when Sherman's army went marching 
through Georgia. Slocum's corps was reviewed by 
Harris sitting astride a fence. This parade left 



JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS {UNCLE REMUS.) 117 

the neighborhood in chaos, and young Harris and 
The Countryman took a long vacation. At last 
peace and quiet and the issue of The Countryman 
were restored. But the paper had had its day. 

Mr. Harris was now a full-fledged compositor, 
and he set his " string " of the Macon Daily Tele- 
grapJi for some months. Then he left to go to 
New Orleans as the private secretary of the editor 
of The Crescent Monthly. This position was not 
arduous, and Mr. Harris found time to write bright 
paragraphs for the city press at about the same 
time that George W. Cable was trying his hand 
at the same kind of work. The Crescent Monthly 
soon waned, and with its end Mr. Harris found 
himself back in Georgia as editor of the Forsyth 
Advertiser, which was and is one of the most in- 
fluential weekly papers in Georgia. He was not 
only editor, but he set most of the type, worked 
off the edition on a hand-press, and wrapped and 
directed his papers for the mail. His editorials 
here, directed against certain abuses in the State, 
were widely copied for their pungent criticism 
and bubbling humor. They attracted the atten- 
tion of Colonel W. T. Thompson, author of 
" Major Jones's Courtship," who was then editor of 
the Savannah Daily News, and he offered Mr. 
Harris a place on his staff. It was accepted. 
This was in 1871. In 1873 Mr. Harris was mar- 
ried. He remained in Savannah until September, 



Ii8 JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS {UNCLE REMUS). 

1876, when the yellow-fever epidemic caused him 
to go up in the mountains to Atlanta, where he 
became an editor of the Constitution. At that 
time the paper was beginning to make a more 
than local reputation by the humorous Negro 
dialect sketches by Mr. S. W. Small, under the 
name of '' Old Si." Shortly after Mr. Harris's 
arrival Mr. Small left the Constitution to engage 
in another enterprise, and the proprietors, in their 
anxiety to replace one of the most attractive 
features of their paper, turned to Mr. Harris for 
aid. He was required to furnish two or three 
sketches a week. He took an old Negro with 
whom he had been familiar on the Turner place, 
and made him chief spokesman in several character 
sketches. Their basis was the projection of the 
old-time Negro against the new condition of things 
brought about by the War. 

These succeeded well ; but tiring of them 
after awhile, he wrote one night the first sketch 
as it appears in the published volume, '' Uncle 
Remus." To the North this was a revelation of 
an unknown life. The slight but strong frame in 
which the old Negro's portrait was set, the playful 
propinquity of smiles and tears, and the fresh 
humor and absolute novelty of the folk-lore tale 
existing as a hidden treasure in the South, were 
revealed for the first time to critical admiration. 
The sketches were widely copied in leading 



JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS {UNCLE REMUS). 119 

journals, like the staid Evening Post of New- 
York. Both the Constitution and Mr. Harris 
soon found that they had a national reputation. 
When the volume containing the collected 
sketches was published, it was an immediate 
success. It was soon reprinted in England ; and 
still sells steadily in large numbers, giving ex- 
quisite pleasure to thousands of children and 
their elders. A second collection of tales, most 
of which were published in The Century, but 
some of which made their first appearance in 
The Critic, was republished in 1883, ^^id in 
that year Mr. Harris was introduced anew to the 
general public as the writer of a sketch in Har- 
per's Christmas, which showed for the first time 
that the firm and artistic hand which drew the 
Negro to perfection had mastered equally well 
the most difficult art of elaborate character-draw- 
ing and of dramatic development. " Mingo," the 
first successful short story of Mr. Harris, was fol- 
lowed by "■ At Teague Poteet's " in The Century. 
I have dwelt somewhat at length on the inci- 
dents of Mr. Harris's career for three reasons : 
first, because the facts have never before been 
printed ; second, because they illustrate in a 
remarkable way the influence of environment on 
a literary intellect, whose steady, healthy, pro- 
gressive growth and development can be clearly 
traced ; and third, because it is evident that Mr. 



I20 JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS {UNCLE REMUS). 

Harris is a young man who has passed over the 
plains of apprenticeship and is mounting the hill of 
purely literary fame, whose acclivity he has over- 
come by making a further exertion of the strength 
and power which he has indicated though not 
fully displayed. At present he lives two lives. 
One is that of his profession. His duties are 
arduous, and consume much of his time. Much 
of the best work in the Coftstitution, which has 
given that paper fame as a representative of 
" the new South," is due to Mr. Harris. In the 
history of Southern journalism he will occupy a 
high place for having introduced in that part of 
the United States personal amenities and freedom 
from sectional tone. He has discussed national 
topics broadly and sincerely, in a style which is 
effective in ** molding public opinion," but which 
is not literature. His second life begins where 
the other ends. It is literally divided as day is 
from night, for his editorial work is done at the 
Constitution ofifice in the day-time, and his liter- 
ary work is done at home at night. On the one 
side he works for bread and butter, on the other 
he works for art, and from the motive that always 
exists in the best literary art. At home he is 
hardest at work when apparently most indolent, 
a'nd he allows his characters to gallop around in 
his brain and develop long before he touches 
pen to paper. When he reaches this stage his 



JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS {UNCLE REMUS). 121 

work is slow and careful, and in marked contrast 
to his editorial work, which is dashed off at white 
heat, as such work must be. 

Perhaps the best illustration I can give of 
his methods is to describe the genesis of **At 
Teague Poteet's," which may also be interesting 
as giving an insight into the work of creative 
authorship. The trial of two United States 
Deputy-Marshals for the killing of an under- 
witted, weak, unarmed, and inoffensive old man, 
who was guilty only of the crime of having a 
private still for " moonshine " — not a member of 
the mountain band, — was progressing in Atlanta 
when the subject of simple proper names as 
titles of stories came up in the Constitution 
office. One of the staff cited Scott's " Ivanhoe," 
Thackeray's " Pendennis," and Dickens's ** David 
Copperfield " as instances of books which were 
likely to attract readers by their titles, and tak- 
ing up a Georgia state-directory, the speaker's 
eye fell on the name Teague Poteet. He sug- 
gested to Mr. Harris that if he merely took that 
name and wove around it the story of the moon- 
shiner's trial, it would attract as many readers as 
Uncle Remus ; and it was further suggested that 
Mr. Harris should make a column sketch of the 
subject for the next Sunday's Constitution, 
From this simple beginning Teague Poteet grew 
after several months' incubation, and when it 



122 JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS {UNCLE REMUS). 

was published in The Century it will be remem- 
bered how the public hailed it as disclosing a 
new phase of American life, similar to those 
revealed by Cable, Craddock and the rest of the 
new generation. No one unfamiliar with the 
people can fully appreciate how truthful and 
exact is the description of characteristics ; or how 
accurately the half-humorous, half-melancholy 
features of the stern drama of life in the locality 
are wrought out, yielding promise of greater 
things to come. 

In person Mr. Harris has few peculiarities. In 
stature he is of the average height of the people 
of his section, rather under the average height of 
the people of the Eastern and Middle States. 
The Northern papers have spoken of Mr. Cable 
as a little man. He and Mr. Harris are about of 
a size, which is not much excelled in their sec- 
tion except by the lank giants of the mountains. 
His features are small. His face is tanned and 
freckled. His mouth is covered by a stubbly 
red mustache, and his eyes are small and blue. 
Both his eyes and mouth are extremely mobile, 
sensitive and expressive. There is probably no 
living man more truly difHdent ; but his diffidence 
is the result of excessive sympathy and tender- 
ness, which cause the bright blue eyes to well up 
at any bit of pathos just as they fairly sparkle 
with humor. His amusements and tastes are 



JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS {UNCLE REMUS), 123 

few and simple. His constant companions are 
Shakspeare, Job, St. Paul, and Ecclesiastes. He 
is devoted to his family, which consists of his 
mother, his wife, four exceedingly bright boys 
and a girl, and the flock of mocking-birds that 
winters in his garden. He never goes into society 
or to the theatre. He once acted as dramatic 
critic of the Constitution^ but his misery at being 
obliged to see and criticise dull actors was so 
acute that he soon resigned the position. The 
small-talk of society has no attractions for him. 
His home is enough. When his children are 
tired and sleepy and are put to bed, he writes at 
the fireside where they have been sitting. It is 
warm in winter, and cool in summer, and never 
lonely ; and so strong is his domestic instinct 
that although he had a room built specially as a 
study, he soon deserted its lonely cheerlessness 
for the comforts of his home, where his tender 
and kindly nature makes him loved by every one. 

Erastus Brainerd. 



PROF. J. A. HARRISON 



125 



PROF. J. A. HARRISON 

AT LEXINGTON, VA. 

Professor Harrison's home is in Lexington, a 
quaint old town in the '' Valley of Virginia." Sit- 
uated on North River, an affluent of the James, 
Lexington is surrounded by mountains covered 
with a native growth of beautiful foliage. In the 
distance tower aloft the picturesque Peaks of 
Otter ; nearer by is seen the unique Natural 
Bridge. For nearly a century it has been a uni- 
versity town. Two institutions of learning have 
generated about the place an intellectual atmos- 
phere. More than one literary character has 
made it a home. It is, indeed, an ideal spot for 
the studious scholar and the diligent litterateur, 

James Albert Harrison was born at Pass Chris- 
tian, Mississippi, the latter part of 1848. His first 
lessons were given by private tutors. Later, his 
family moved to New Orleans and he entered the 
public schools of that city. From the public 
schools he went to the High School, at the head 
of his class. But shortly afterwards, in 1862, 
New Orleans fell and his family went into exile. 
They wandered about the Confederacy some time, 

127 



128 PROF. J. A. HARRISON. 

from pillar to post, till finally they stuck in 
Georgia till the close of the War. This fortunate 
event kept him from becoming a midshipman on 
the Patrick Henry. Finally the family returned 
to New Orleans. Deprived of regular instruction 
he had been giving himself up to voracious, but 
very miscellaneous, reading ; but now, under a 
learned German Jew, he began to prepare him- 
self for the University of Virginia, where he re- 
mained two years — until, he says, '' I had to go 
to work." After teaching a year near Baltimore 
he went to Europe, and studied two years at 
Bonn and Munich. On his return, in 1871, he was 
elected to the chair of Latin and Modern Lan- 
guages in Randolph Macon College, Virginia. In 
1875 he was. called to the chair of English and 
Modern Languages in Vanderbilt University ; but 
he remained where he was till the next year. 
Then he accepted the corresponding chair in 
Washington and Lee University, which he has 
held ever since. There, in September, 1885, the 
happiest event of his life took place. He was mar- 
ried to a daughter of Virginia's famous " War 
Governor," Governor Letcher. 

Prof. Harrison comes of a literary family. His 
father, who was a leading citizen of New Orleans, 
and quite wealthy till some time after the War, 
belonged to the Harrison family of Virginia. His 
mother was a descendant of the Mayor of Bristol 



PROF. /. A. HARRISON. 1 29 

in Charles II. 's time, as is shown by a family diary 
begun in 1603 and continued to the present day. 
On this side, too, he is related to John Hookham 
Frere, the translator of Aristophanes. Others of 
his literary kinsfolk are Miss F. C. Baylor, author 
of "On Both Sides" and "Behind the Blue 
Ridge," and Mrs. Tiernan, author of " Homo- 
selle," " Suzette," etc. In Prof. Harrison's library 
there are about 3000 volumes, in 1 5 or 20 different 
languages, while here and there through the house 
are scattered bric-a-brac, pictures, and a heteroge- 
neous collections of odds and ends picked up in 
travel — feather-pictures and banded agates from 
Mexico, embroideries and pipes from Constanti- 
nople, souvenirs from Alaska, British America, 
Norway, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and 
Greece. His naturally good taste in art and music 
has been well cultivated. His conversation is 
delightful — now racy with anecdote, now bristling 
with repartee, again charming with instruction. 
More than any other man, I think, he is a har- 
binger of better things at the South. He is a 
real son of the new South. In him the old and 
the new are harmoniously blended. To the polish, 
the suavity, the refinement of the old South are 
added the earnestness, the enthusiasm, the wider 
and more useful culture of the new. Up to this 
time his life has been spent in study, in travel, in 
teaching, and in writing. 



130 PROF. J. A. HARRISON'. 

In teaching and in scholarly work Professor Har- 
rison has been unusually active. Since 1871 he 
has taught nine months of every year ; and almost 
every year has seen from his pen some piece of 
scholarly work in the domain of English, French 
or German literature and philology. Heine's 
*' Reisebilder," "French Syntax," ''Negro Eng- 
lish," " Creole Patois," " Teutonic Life in Beo- 
wulf," ten lectures on " Anglo-Saxon Poetry " 
before Johns Hopkins University — these, with 
several other publications, bear witness to his 
industry and his scholarship. But his chief claim 
to regard in this department of literature is in 
originating the '' Library of Anglo-Saxon Poetry," 
and in his work on the " Handy Anglo-Saxon 
Dictionary." The first volume of the Library, 
that on Beowulf, at once took the first place with 
English and American scholars, and was adopted 
as a text-book in Oxford and other universities. 
In the lecture-room Professor Harrison is pleasant, 
genial, helpful and alert. His students like him 
as a man, and take pride in showing his name on 
their diplomas. He had not been teaching two 
years before he convinced every one that only 
thorough scholarship could win that signature. 

At a very early age Professor Harrison began 
to write doggerel for the New Orleans Picayune 
and Times, While a student at the University 
of Virginia he wrote an article for the Baltimore 



Prof. j. a, harrison. 13 i 

Episcopal Methodist called "■ Notre Dame de Paris," 
which attracted much attention. His next piece 
of literary work was a paper on Bjornstjerne 
Bjornson, which won the $50 gold medal given 
by The University Magazine. As he was not a 
matriculate at the time, the prize could not be 
awarded. In 1871 his "first literary effort," as 
he calls it, appeared in Lippincotf s Magazine. It 
was entitled " Goethe and the Scenery about 
Baden-Baden." Then essay after essay followed 
in quick succession from his pen. Soon after this 
his connection with The Southern Magazine began, 
which resulted in a series of essays on French, 
German, English, Swedish, and Italian poets. 
These were published by Hurd & Houghton, in 
1875, under the title of ''A Group of Poets and 
their Haunts," and the edition was immediately 
sold. In literary circles, especially in Boston, 
this book won for the young author firm stand- 
ing-ground. His first work is chiefly remarkable 
for the overflow of a copious vocabulary and the 
almost riotous display of a rich fancy and abun- 
dant learning. We are swept along with the 
stream in which trees torn up by the roots from 
Greek and Latin banks come whirling, dashing, 
plunging by in countless numbers ; the waters 
spread out on ail sides, but we are not always 
quite sure of the channel. Since then the waters 
have subsided, and we see a broad channel and a 



132 PROF. J. A. HARRISON. 

current swift and clear. In 1876 Professor Harri- 
son made a visit to Greece, and on his return pub- 
lished through Houghton, Osgood & Co. a volume 
of " Greek Vignettes." The London Academy 
expressed the general opinion of this book in the 
following sentence : '* It is so charmingly written 
that one can hardly lay it down to criticise it." 
In 1878 a visit to Spain resulted in another book, 
"Spain in Profile," which was followed in 1881 by 
the '' History of Spain." In 1885 the Putnams 
began to publish the Story of the Nations, and 
Professor Harrison's " Story of Greece " was 
given the place of honor as the initial volume of 
the series. His chief characteristics, as shown in 
these works, are critical insight and descriptive 
power. His versatile fancy, too, is ever giving 
delightful surprises, as in this little note anent 
Dr. Holmes's seventy-fifth birthday : " He is the 
Light of New England, as Longfellow was the 
Love, and Emerson the Intellect. I saw a won- 
derful cactus in Mexico, all prickles and blos- 
soms — Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes all over; but 
the blossoms hid the prickles." Some of his most 
elaborate descriptions are found in " Spain in 
Profile," such as the " Alhambra," " A Spanish 
Bull-fight "; others again in The Critic (" Venice 
from a Gondola," " A Summer in Alaska," etc.) to 
which he has long been a constant contributor. 
His critical insight is shown in such reviews as 



PROF. /. A. HARRISON. 1 33 

those of Ruskin, Poe, Balzac, and Froude's 
" Oceana," and in such brief essays as " An Itah'an 
Critic," '' Two Views of Shelley," *' George Sand 
and Diderot," etc. His contributions to other 
periodicals have been numerous. His articles in 
The Natioftf Literary World, Current, Independent, 
Home Journal, Lippincotfs, Manhattan, Overland 
Mo7ithly, American Journal of Philology, Anglia, 
etc., would fill several volumes. Two charming 
stories — " P'tit-Jos6-Ba'tiste," a Creole story, and 
" Dieudonn^e," a West Indian Creole story — tes- 
tify to his skill in this kind of writing. Since 
1895 he has been professor of English and Ro- 
mance languages in the University of Virginia. 
Several trips to different parts of Europe, visits to 
Alaska, British America, Mexico, and the West 
Indies, during which he studied the languages as 
well as the customs of the peoples, have given him 
many a " peep over the edge of things." 

W. M. Baskervill. 



COL JOHN HAY 



135 



COL. JOHN HAY 

IN WASHINGTON 

It was a happy thought that inspired The 
Critic s series of Authors at Home. The very 
idea was benevolence. One of its charms is the 
reader's sense of mutuality — reciprocity. Has 
not Col. Hay, ^or instance, been s welcomed guest 
beneath many, many roof-trees, beside many, 
many hearthstones ; and are his own doors to be 
shut with a " Procul, O procul este, profani ! " ? 
One can fancy the gratitude of posterity for these 
contemporary sketches of those whose lips have 
been touched and tongues loosened by the song- 
inspirer — of those who have " instructed our ig- 
norance, elevated our platitudes, brightened our 
dullness, and delighted our leisure." For the 
lack of a Critic in the past, how little we know 
of those authors at home whom we forgather with 
in imagination ! A scrap of this memoir, that 
biography, and yonder letter, makes a ragged 
picture at best. There was only one Boswell, 
and he, as Southey says, has gone to heaven for 
his " Johnson," if ever a man went there for his 

137 



138 COL. JOHN HA F, 

good works. The mind's eye, of course, pictures 
Rogers at one of his famous breakfasts ; the gal- 
axy at Holland House ; Coleridge monotoning, 
with Lamb furnishing puns for periods ; " smug 
Sydney," ten miles from a lemon, scattering 
pearls before Yorkshire swine ; Dr. Johnson at 
Thrale's, drinking tea and bullying his betters ; 
Dryden enthroned at the Kit-kat ; but all the por- 
traits, save those by Boswell, are unsatisfactory — 
mere outlines without coloring, and lacking that 
essential background, the "at home." 

Great political revolutions are the results or 
causes of literary schools ; and the future student 
of our literature will note with more emphasis 
than we, that one of the incidents or results of 
the war between the sections was the birth of a 
new school of writers whose works are distinc- 
tively original and distinctively American. To 
this class, who have won, and are winning, fame 
for themselves while conferring it upon their 
country, belongs Col. Hay. His earlier writings 
have the characteristics of freshness, vigor and in- 
tensity which indicate an absence of the literary 
vassalage that dwarfed the growth and conven- 
tionalized or anglicized American writers as a 
class. Travel and indwelling among the shrines 
of the Old World's literary gods and goddesses, 
have not un-Americanized either the man or the 
author. The facile transition from " Jim Bludso " 



COL. JOHN HA V. 139 

to " A Woman's Love ** is paralleled by that from 
a bull-fight to a Bourbon duel. 

Though not at all ubiquitous, Col. Hay is a 
man of many homes, — that of his birth, Indiana ; 
that of his Alma Mater, " Brown," whose memory 
he has gracefully and affectionately embalmed in 
verse ; that of his Mother-in-Law, Illinois, having 
been admitted to her bar in 1861. This great 
year — 1861 — the pivot upon which turned so 
many destinies, — saw him *' at home " in the 
White House. Next to his own individual 
claims upon national recognition, his relations to 
the martyred President, the well-known confi- 
dence, esteem and affection which that great 
guider of national destiny felt for his youthful 
secretary, have rendered his name as familiar as 
a household word. At home in the tented fields 
of the Civil War, at home in the diplomatic 
circles of Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, Col. Hay, 
after an exceptionally varied experience, planted 
his first vine and fig-tree in Cleveland, Ohio, and 
his second in the City of Washington. Between 
these two homes he vibrates. The summer finds 
him in his Euclid Avenue house, which occupies 
the site where that of Susan Coolidge once stood. 
Around its far-reaching courtyard and uncramped, 
unfenced spaciousness, she moved — that happiest 
of beings, one endeared to little stranger hearts 
all over the land. 



I40 COL. JOHN HA V. 

Among the many handsome residences erected 
within a few years in Washington, Col. Hay's is 
one of the largest. Its solid mass of red brick, mas- 
sive stone trimmings, stairway and arched entrance, 
Romanesque in style, give it an un-American ap- 
pearance of being built to stay. The architect, 
the late H. H. Richardson, seems to have dedi- 
cated the last efforts of dying genius to the object 
of making the structure bold without and beauti- 
ful within. The great, broad hall, the graceful 
and roomy stairway, the large dining-room on the 
right, wainscoted in dark mahogany, with 
its great chimney-place and great stone mantel- 
piece extending beyond on either side; the other 
chimney-places with African marble mantel- 
pieces ; the oak wainscoting of the large library, 
and the colored settles on either side of the fire- 
place ; the cosey little room at the entrance ; 
the charming drawing-room — in brief, it seems 
as though Mr. Richardson contemplated a monu- 
ment to himself when he designed this beautiful 
home. The library is the largest room ; and it 
was there that I found Col. Hay at home in every 
sense. The walls are shelved, hung (not crowded) 
with pictures ; the works of vtrtu break the 
otherwise staring ranks of books. 

The author's house is situated at the corner of 
H and Sixteenth Streets. Its southern windows 
look out upon Lafayette Park, and beyond it at 



COL. JOHN HA Y. 141 

the confronting White House, peculiarly sug- 
gestive to Col. Hay of historic days and men ; 
and as he labors on his History of Lincoln, I 
imagine, the view of the once home of the mar- 
tyr is a source at once of sadness and of inspi- 
ration. In the same street, one block to the 
west, lived George Bancroft ; diagonally across 
the park, and in full view, is the house where was 
attempted the assassination of Secretary Sew- 
ard, and near where Philip Barton Key was killed 
by Gen. Sickles ; opposite the east front of Col. 
Hay's house is St. John's, one of the oldest 
Episcopal churches in the District of Columbia, 
much frequented by the older Presidents. It was 
here that Dolly Madison exhibited her frills and, 
fervor. Before the days of American admirals, 
tradition says that one of the old commodores, 
returning from a long and far cruise in which he 
had distinguished himself, and starting for St. 
John's on a Sunday morning, entered the church 
as the congregation was about repeating the 
Creed. As soon as he was in the aisle, the peo- 
ple stood up, as is the custom. The old commo- 
dore, being conscious of meritorious service, mis- 
took the movement for an expression of personal 
respect, and with patronizing politeness, waved 
his hand toward the Rev. Dr. Pyne and the con- 
gregation, and said : " Don't rise on my account ! " 
The whitened sepulchre of a house to the west of 



142 COL. JOHN HAY. 

Col. Hay*s, was the residence of Senator Slidell — 
the once international What-shall-we-do-with-him? 
The eastern corner of the opposite block was the 
home and death-place of Sumner. In the imme- 
diate neighborhood are the three clubs of Wash- 
ington — the Metropolitan, Cosmos, and Jefferson. 
The first has the character of being exclusive, the 
second of being scientific, and the third liberal. 
In the one they eat terrapin ; in the other, talk 
anthropology ; while in the last, Congressmen, 
Cabinet officers and journalists are " at home," 
and a spirit of cosmopolitanism prevails. 

The author of " Pike County Ballads " and 
" Castilian Days," and the biographer of Lincoln, 
is about sixty-four years of age. In person, of 
average height; gray hair, mustache and beard, 
and brown eyes ; well built, well dressed, well 
bred and well read, he is pleasant to look at and 
to talk with. He is a good talker and polite 
listener, and altogether an agreeable and in- 
structive companion. As a collector he seems to 
be jealous as to quality rather than greedy as to 
quantity. His shelves are not loaded down with 
so many pounds of print bound in what-not, and 
his pictures and works of art " have pedigrees." 
I found great pleasure in examining a fine old 
edition of Lucan's *' Pharsalia," printed at Straw- 
berry Hill, with notes by Grotius and Bentley. 
A much more interesting work was " The Hier- 



COL. JOHN HA Y. 143 

archie of the Blessed Angells, Printed by Adam 
Islip, 1635." On the fly-leaf was written: " E. 
B. Jones, from his friend A. C. Swinburne." My 
attention was called to the following lines : 

Mellifluous Shake-speare, whose enchanting quill, 
Commanded mirth and passion, was but Will. 

They suggested the Donnelly extravaganza ; and 
I discovered Col. Hay to be of the opinion which 
well-informed students of English literature gen- 
erally hold — namely, that Mr. Donnelly's inge- 
nuity is equalled only by his ignorance. There 
was also a presentation copy of the first edition 
of Beckford's " Vathek," and De Thou's copy of 
Calvin's Letters, with De Thou's and his wife's 
ciphers intertwined in gilt upon its side and back, 
expressive of a partnership even in their books ; 
and rare and costly editions of Rogers's " Italy" 
and " Poems." It will be recollected that the 
banker-poet engaged Turner to illustrate his 
verses, and the total cost to the author was 
about $60,000. Among objects of special in- 
terest are the bronze masks of Mr. Lincoln, one 
by Volk (i860), the other by Clark Mills (1865). 
It is a test of credulity to accept them as the 
counterfeit presentments of the President. There 
is such a difference in the contour, lines and ex- 
pression, that, as Col. Hay remarked, the con- 
trast exhibits the influences and effects of the 



144 COL. JOHN HAY. 

great cares and responsibilities under which Mr. 
Lincoln labored ; and although both casts were 
made in life, and at an interval of only five years, 
the latter one represents a face fifteen years 
older than the first. 

Over the library door are two large bronze por- 
traits, hanging on the same line ; one is of How- 
ells, the other of James. Residence abroad, and 
that attention to and study of art to which " An 
Hour with the Painters " bears evidence, enabled 
Col. Hay to make a selection of oils and water- 
colors, pen-and-inks and drawings which is not 
marred by anything worthless. Before referring 
to these, I must not pass a portrait of Henry 
James, when twenty-one years of age, painted by 
Lafarge. A Madonna and Child, by Sassoferrato ; 
St. Paul's, London, by Canaletto ; a woman's 
portrait by Maes ; four pen-and-ink sketches by 
Du Maurier, and one by Zamacois ; two by 
Turner — of Lucerne and the Drachenfels (see 
" Childe Harold," or the guide-book, for Byron's 
one-line picture of the castellated cliff) ; a water- 
color by Girtin, Turner's over-praised teacher ; 
and a collection of original drawings by the old 
masters — Raphael, Correggio, Teniers, Guido, 
Rubens and others, — surely there is nothing 
superfluous in his collection ; and the same 
elegant and discriminating taste is exhibited in 
all of Col, Hay's surroundings. The poet has 



COL, JOHN HA V. 145 

laid aside his lyre temporarily, and with Mr. Nico- 
lay, late Marshal of the Supreme Court, devoted 
himself to preparing for T/ie Ceiitury what, at the 
time it was written, was the most exhaustive me- 
moir of a man and his times ever written on this 
side of the Atlantic. Conscious of the depth, 
height, and breadth of their theme, the writers did 
not propose to leave anything for successors to 
supply on the subject of Mr. Lincoln's administra- 
tion. 

Reflecting that though scientific workers were 
plentiful in Washington there was but a sprink- 
ling of literary men, I asked Col. Hay what he 
thought of the capital's possibilities as a "literary 
centre." His opinion was that the great presses 
and publishing-houses were the nucleus of literary 
workers; but that the advantages afforded, or to 
be afforded, by the National Library and other Gov- 
ernment facilities, must of necessity invite authors 
to Washington, from time to time, on special er- 
rands, or for temporary residence. 

B. G. LovEjOY. 

[Since his residence in London as Ambassador 
to the Court of St. James and his resignation from 
the position of Secretary of State, Col. Hay has 
divided his time between Washington and his sum- 
mer home at Lake Sunapee, in New Hampshire. 
. — Editors.] 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 



147 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

AT CAMBRIDGE 

Colonel Higginson looks back on the anti- 
slavery period as on something quite unusual in 
human experience. He believes there has been 
no other movement of the moral consciousness 
in man since the period of the Puritan upheaval 
which has given such mental quickening and 
force to those taking part in it. He sees in it 
the better part of his training as an author ; and 
it has guided him in his relations to the social 
and intellectual agitations of his time. His 
training as a reformer he cannot forget ; and he 
still remains first of all the friend of human prog- 
ress. In 1850, he lost his pulpit in Newbury- 
port because of his zealous advocacy of the anti- 
slavery cause, in season and out of season. At 
the same time, he was the Freesoil candidate for 
Congress in the northeastern district of Massa- 
chusetts. He became the pastor of a Free 
Church in Worcester, not connected with any 
sect, and organized quite as much in behalf of 
freedom in politics as for the sake of freedom in 
religion. He was connected with all the most 

149 



150 THOMAS WE NT WORTH HIGGINSON. 

stirring anti-slavery scenes in Boston, and he 
eagerly favored physical resistance to the 
encroachments of the pro-slavery party. He 
joined in the Anthony Burns riot, in which he 
was wounded, and which failed only through a 
misunderstanding. He was a leader in organiz- 
ing Freesoil parties for Kansas, and spent six 
weeks in the Territory in that behalf. He was 
one of those who planned a party for the rescu- 
ing of John Brown after his sentence at Harper's 
Ferry ; and he early offered his services to the 
Governor of Massachusetts on the breaking out 
of the Civil War. His zeal for the blacks was so 
well known, that it inspired the following lines of 
some anonymous poetizer: 

There was a young curate of Worcester 

Who could have a command if he'd choose ter ; 

But he said each recruit 

Must be blacker than soot 
Or else he'd go preach where he used ter ! 

In fact, he recruited two companies in the 
vicinity of Worcester, and was given a captain's 
commission. While yet in camp he received the 
appointment to the colonelcy of the First South 
Carolina Volunteers — ** the first slave regiment 
mustered into the service of the United States 
during the late Civil War," — nearly six months 
previous to Colonel Shaw's famous regiment, the 
54th Mass. Volunteers. 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGIN30N: i^t 

Col. Higginson signed the first call, in 1850, for 
a national convention of the friends of woman's 
suffrage, which was held in Worcester. One of 
the leaders of that movement since, his fifteen- 
years* defence of it in the columns of The 
Woman's Journal shows the faithfulness of his 
devotion. His connection with the Free Relig- 
ious Association proves that he has been true to 
the faith of his youth, and to his refusal to con- 
nect himself with any sect in entering the pulpit. 
When that association lost its pristine glow and 
devotion, with the passing of the transcendental 
period, he still remained faithful to his early idea, 
that all religious truth comes by intuition. His 
addresses before it on '* The Sympathy of Relig- 
ions " and on "The Word Philanthropy "indicate 
the direction of his faith in humanity and in its 
development into ever better social, moral, and 
spiritual conditions. 

Whatever the value of the independent move- 
ment in politics, which has given us a change in 
the political administration of the country for the 
first time in a quarter of a century, it doubtless 
owes its inception and strength largely to those 
men, like Curtis, Higginson, and Julian, who were 
enlisted heart and soul in the anti-slavery agita- 
tion, and who got there a training which has 
made them impatient of party manipulation and 
wrong-doing. Had these men not been trained 



152 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 

to believe in man more than in party, there would 
have been no independent organization and no 
revolution in our politics. In 1880, Colonel Hig- 
ginson was on the committee of one hundred for 
the organization of a new party in case Grant was 
nominated for a third term ; and four years pre- 
viously he placed himself in line with the Inde- 
pendents. In 1884, he was the mover of the 
resolution in the Boston Reform Club for the 
calling of a convention, out of which grew the 
independent movement of that year. The resolu- 
tions reported by him were taken up in the New 
York convention and the spirit of them carried 
to successful issue. He was a leading speaker 
for the Independents during the campaign, giving 
nearly thirty addresses in the States of Massa- 
chusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, and 
New Jersey. The chairman of the Massachusetts 
committee wrote him after the campaign of the 
great value of his services, and thanked him in 
the most flattering terms in behalf of the Inde- 
pendents of the State. 

Colonel Higginson is an author who finds his 
intellectual inspiration in contact with Nature and 
man, as well as in books. His essays on out-door 
life, and on physical culture, show the activity of 
his nature and his zeal for all kinds of knowledge. 
He easily interests himself in all subjects ; he can 
turn his mind readily from one pursuit to another, 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 153 

and he enjoys all with an equal relish. He has a 
love of mathematics such as few men possess ; 
and, when in college, Professor Peirce anticipated 
that would be the direction of his studies. Dur- 
ing the time of the anti-slavery riots he one day 
met the Professor in the street, and remarked to 
him that he should enjoy an imprisonment of 
several months for the sake of the leisure it would 
give him to read La Place's ** Mecanique Celeste." 
" I heartily wish you might have that oppor- 
tunity," was the Professor's reply ; for he disliked 
the anti-slavery agitation as much as he loved his 
own special line of studies. Colonel Higginson 
has also been an enthusiastic lover of natural his- 
tory, and he could easily have given his life to 
that pursuit. Perhaps not less ardent has been 
his interest in the moral and political sciences, to 
the practical interpretation of which his life has 
always been more or less devoted. Not only has 
he been the champion of the reforms already 
mentioned, but he has been the zealous friend of 
education. For three years a member of the 
Massachusetts State Board of Education, he has 
also been on the visiting committees of Harvard 
University and the Bridgewater Normal School 
for several years. He was in the Massachusetts 
Legislature during 1880 and 1881. He has been 
an active member of the Social Science Associa- 
tion ; and he is now the President of the Round 



154 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 

Table Club of Boston, which grew out of that 
organization. 

This versatility of talent and activity has had 
its important influence on Colonel Higginson's 
life as an author. It has given vitality, freshness, 
and a high aim to his work ; but it has, perhaps, 
scattered its force. All who have read his prin- 
cipal works, as now published in a uniform edition 
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., will have noted that 
they embody many phases of his activity. There 
are the purely literary essays, the two volumes of 
Newport stories and sketches, the out-door essays, 
the volume of army reminiscences, and the volume 
of short essays (from the Independent^ Tribune, 
and Woman s Journal) devoted to the culture and 
advancement of woman. The admiring readers 
of the best of these volumes can but regret that 
in recent years his attention has been so exclu- 
sively drawn to historical writing. Though his 
later work has been done in the finest manner, it 
does not give a free opportunity for the expres- 
sion of Colonel Higginson's charming style and 
manner. The day when he returns to purely 
original work, in the line of his own finished and 
graceful interpretations of nature and life, will be 
hailed with joy by the lovers of his books. 

Any account of the personal characteristics of 
Colonel Higginson w^ould be imperfect which 
omitted to mention his success as a public speaker 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGIxVSON. 155 

and as an after-dinner orator. He was trained 
for public speaking on the anti-slavery platform, 
a better school than any now provided for the 
development of youthful talent. When preaching 
in Worcester he began to deliver literary lectures 
before the flourishing lyceums of that day. As a 
lecturer he was successful ; and he continued for 
many years to be a favorite of the lyceum-goers, 
until the degeneracy of the popular lecture caused 
him to withdraw from that field of literary effort. 
The lecture on " The Aristocracy of the Dollar," 
which he now occasionally gives to special au- 
diences, has been in use for more than twenty 
years, and it has been transformed many times. 
Another well-worn lecture is that on '' Literature 
in a Republic," which he repeats less often. 
Among his other subjects have been '* Thinking 
Animals" (instinct and reason), and ** How to 
Study History." The paper in the ''Atlantic 
Essays" on '^ The Puritan Minister" long did 
duty as a lyceum lecture ; and those who have 
read it can but think it well fitted to the purpose. 
On the platform Colonel Higginson is self-con- 
trolled in manner, and strong in his reserved 
power. He does not captivate his hearer by the 
rush and swing and over-mastering weight of his 
oratory, but by the freshness, grace and finish of 
his thought. He often appears on the platform 
in Cambridge and Boston in behalf of the causes 



156 THOMAS WENT IVOR 7H HIGGINSON, 

for which those cities are noted, and no one is 
more popular or listened to with greater satisfac- 
tion. Perhaps he only needs the passion and the 
stormy vigor of a cause which completely com- 
mands and carries captive his nature to make one 
of the most successful of popular orators. During 
the political campaign of 1884 his addresses were 
marked by their force and fire ; and he was called 
for wherever there was a demand for an enthu- 
siastic and vigorous presentation of the Inde- 
pendent position. As an after-dinner speaker, 
however. Colonel Higginson's gifts shine out 
most clearly and reveal the charm of his style to 
the best advantage. 

It is the public rather than the private side of 
Colonel Higginson's character which has been 
thus revealed ; but it is the side which is most im- 
portant to the understanding and appreciation of 
his books. It is the quiet and busy life of the 
scholar and man-of-letters he leads in Cambridge, 
but of a man-of-letters who is intensely inter- 
ested in all that pertains to his country's welfare 
and all that makes for the elevation of humanity. 
He is ready at any moment to leave his books 
and his pen to engage in affairs, and in settling 
questions of public importance, when the cause 
of right and truth demands. Quickly and keenly 
sympathetic with the life of his time, he will never 
permit the writing of books to absorb his heart 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 157 

to the exclusion of whatever human interests his 
country calls him to consider. 

Born and bred in Cambridge, Colonel Higginson 
lived in Newburyport, Worcester, and Newport 
from 1847 to 1878. In the latter year he returned 
to Cambridge, and took up his residence in a 
house near the University. Soon after, he built a 
house on Observatory Hill, between Cambridge 
Square and Mount Auburn Cemetery, on ground 
over which he played as a boy. It is a plain- 
looking structure, combining the Queen Anne 
and the old colonial style, but very cosey and 
homelike within. The hall is modeled after that 
of an old family mansion in Portsmouth ; and 
many other features of the house are copied from 
old New England dwellings. A sword presented 
to Colonel Higginson by the freemen of Beaufort, 
S. C, the colors borne by his regiment, and other 
relics of the Civil War, decorate the hall. To the 
left on entering is the study, along one side of 
which are well-filled book-shelves, on another a 
piano, while a bright fire burns in the open grate. 
Beyond is a smaller room, lined on all sides 
with books, in which Colonel Higginson does his 
writing. His book-shelves hold many rare books ; 
a considerable collection by and about women, 
which he prizes highly and often uses, he presented 
to the Boston Public Library, where it is known as 
the Galatea Collection. His study has no special 



1 5 8 THOMA S WENT WOR TH HIGGINSON, 

ornaments ; its furniture is simple, and the book- 
cases are of the plainest sort. The most attrac- 
tive article of furniture the room contains is his 
own easy-chair, which came to him from the Went- 
worth family, where it had been an heirloom for 
generations. Back of the parlor is the dining- 
room, which is sunny and cheerful, adorned with 
flowers, and adapted to family life and conversa- 
tion. The pictures that cover the walls all through 
the house have been selected with discriminating 
appreciation. Many indications of an artistic taste 
appear throughout the house; and everywhere 
there are signs of the domestic comfort the Colo- 
nel enjoys so much. His present wife is a niece 
of Longfellow's first wife. Her literary tastes 
have found expression in her " Seashore and Prai- 
rie," a volume of pleasant sketches, in the publica- 
tion of which Longfellow took a hearty interest; 
and in her " Room for One More," a delightful 
children's book. Domestic in his tastes, his home 
is to Colonel Higginson the centre of the world. 
Its " bright, particular star " is his daughter of 
twenty, his only child, to whom he is devotedly 
attached. His happiest hours are spent in her 
company, and in watching the growth of her mind. 
Everything about Colonel Higginson 's house 
indicates a refined and cultivated taste, but noth- 
ing of the dilettante spirit is to be seen. He loves 
what is artistic, but he prefers not to sacrifice tp 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 159 

it the home feeling and the home comforts. He 
writes all the better for his quiet and home-keep- 
ing environment, and for the wide circle of his 
social and personal relations with the best men and 
women of his time. His literary work is done in 
the morning, and he seldom takes up the pen after 
the task of the forenoon is accomplished. Most 
of his work is done slowly and deliberately, with 
careful elaboration and thorough revision. In this 
manner he wrote his review of Dr. Holmes's 
*' Emerson " in The Nation ; and his essays in the 
same periodical following the deaths of Longfel- 
low, Emerson, and Phillips. He thoroughly en- 
joyed the writing of the papers published in Har- 
per s Monthly^ which were reissued in book form 
as his " Larger History of the United States," and 
he entered on the task of hunting out the illustra- 
tions and the illustrative details with an antiqua- 
rian's zeal and a poet's love of the romantic. His 
address on a Revolutionary vagabond shows the 
fascination which the old-time has for him in all 
its features of quaintness, romance and pictur- 
esqueness. 

Colonel Higginson finds the morning hour 
the most conducive to freshness and vigor of 
thought, and the most promotive of health of 
body and mind. After dinner he devotes himself 
to his family, to social recreation, to communings 
with and studies of Nature, and to business. He 



l6o THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 

is quite at home in Cambridge society ; and, being 
to the manner born, he enters into its intellectual 
and social recreations with relish and satisfaction. 
He is a ready and interesting converser, bright, 
witty, full of anecdote, and quick with illustra- 
tions and quotations of the most pertinent kind. 
His wide reading, large experience of life, and 
extensive acquaintance with men and women 
give fiim rich materials for conversation, which he 
knows how to use gracefully and with good effect. 
He readily wins the confidence of those he meets. 
Women find him a welcome companion, whose 
kindliness and chivalric courtesy win their 
heartiest admiration. They turn to him with 
confidence, as to the champion of their sex, and 
he naturally numbers many bright and noble 
wc;jien among his friends. 

He is a dignified, ready and agreeable presiding 
oflficer. As a leader of club life he is eminently 
successful, whether it be the Round Table, the 
Browning, or the Appalachian Mountain Club. 
He enjpys a certain amount of this kind of intel- 
lectual recreation ; and fortunate is the club 
which secures his kindly and gracious guidance. 
Very early a reader of Browning, he is thoroughly 
familiar with the works of that poet, and rejoices 
in whatever extends a knowledge of his writings. 
Especially has he been the soul of the Round- 
Table Club, which meets fortnightly in Boston 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. i6i 

parlors — an association full of good-fellowship, 
the spirit of thoughtful inquiry, and earnest 
sympathy with the best intellectual life of the 
time. 

As Colonel Higginson walks along the street, 
much of the soldier's bearing appears ; for he is 
tall and erect, and keeps the soldier's true dig- 
nity of movement. His chivalric spirit pervades 
much that he has written, but it is tempered and 
refined by the artistic instinct for grace and 
beauty. He has the manly and heroic temper, 
but none of the soldier's rudeness or love of vio- 
lence. So he appears in his books as of knightly 
metal, but as a knight who also loves the role of 
the troubadour. A master of style, he does not 
write for the sake of decoration and ornament. 
He is emphatically a scholar and a lover of 
books, but not in the scholastic sense. A lover 
of ideas, an idealist by nature and conviction, 
he sees in the things of the human spirit what is 
more than all the scholar's lore and knowledge 
wrung from the physical world. He is a scholar 
who learns of men and events more ihan of 
books ; and yet what wealth of classic and liter- 
ary allusion is his throughout all his books and 
addresses ! Whether in the study or in the camp, 
on the platform or in the State House, his tastes 
are literary and scholarly ; but his sympathies are 
with all that is natural, manly and progressive. 



1 62 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 

Seven months of last year Colonel Higginson 
spent in Europe, and he has just finished a life of 
Longfellow in the " American Men of Letters '* 
series. 

George Willis Cooke. 



DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



163 



DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

IN BEACON STREET 

"It is strange," remarks Lady Wilde, "how 
often a great genius has given a soul to a locality." 
We may prefer our own illustration to hers, and 
remember in simpler fashion what Judd's " Marga- 
ret" did for a little village in Maine, or what 
Howe did for a little Western town, instead of 
insisting that Walter Scott created Scotland or 
Byron the Rhine. But the remark suggests, 
perhaps, quite as forcibly, what locality has 
done for genius. The majority of writers who 
have tried to deal with people, whether as 
novelists, poets, or essayists, localize their hu- 
man beings until " local color " becomes one of 
the most essential factors of their success. 
Sometimes, like Judd and Howe, they make the 
most of a very narrow environment ; sometimes, 
like Cable, they make their environment include 
a whole race, till the work becomes historical as 
well as photographic; sometimes, like Mrs. Jack- 
son, they travel for a new environment; some- 
times, like Howells and James, they travel from 

165 



1 66 DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 

environment to environment, and write now of 
Venice, now of London, now of Boston, with skill 
equal to the ever-varying opportunity ; some- 
times, like George Eliot writing '' Romola," or 
Harriet Prescott Spofford writing "■ In a Cellar," 
they stay at home and give wonderful pictures of 
a life and time they have never known — com- 
pelled, at least, however, to seek the environment 
of a library. Even Shakspeare, who was cer- 
tainly not a slave to his surroundings, sought 
local color from books to an extent that we real- 
ize on seeing Irving's elaborate efforts to repro- 
duce it. Even Hawthorne, escaping from the 
material world whenever he could into the realm 
of spirit and imagination, made profound studies 
of Salem or Italy the basis from which he flew to 
the empyrean. To understand perfectly how fine 
such work as this is, one must have, one's self, 
either from experience or study, some knowledge 
of the localities so admirably reproduced. 

The genius of Oliver Wendell Holmes was almost 
unique in the fact that, dealing almost exclusively 
with human beings — not merely human nature ex- 
hibited in maxims — rarely wandering into discus- 
sions of books or art or landscape — it was almost 
entirely independent of any environment whatever. 
He was anchored to one locality almost as securely 
as Judd was to New England or Howe to the 
West ; for a chronological record of the events of 



DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 167 

his life makes no mention of any journeys, except 
the two years and a half as medical student in 
Europe, when he was twenty-four years old, and 
"One Hundred Days in Europe " in 1887. He 
spent every winter in Boston, every summer 
at Beverly Farms, which, like Nahant, may 
almost be called " cold roast Boston " ; yet 
during the fifty years he wrote from Boston, he 
neither sought his material from his special 
environment nor tried to escape from it. It is 
human nature, not Boston nature, that he has 
drawn for us. Once, in *' Elsie Venner," there is 
an escape like Hawthorne's into the realm of the 
psychological and weird ; several times in the 
novels there are photographic bits of a New Eng- 
land *' party," or of New England character; but 
the great mass of the work which has appealed to 
so wide a class of readers with such permanent 
power appeals to them because, dealing with men 
and women, it deals with no particular men and 
women. Indeed, it is hardly even men, women, 
and children that troop through his pages ; but 
rather man, woman, and child. His human beings 
are no more Bostonians than the ducks of his 
" Aviary " are Charles River ducks. They are 
ducks. He happened to see them on the Charles 
River ; nay, within the still narrower limits of his 
own window-pane ; still, they are ducks, and not 
merely Boston ducks. The universality of his 



1 68 DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

genius is wonderful, not because he exhibits it 
in writing now a clever novel about Rome, now a 
powerful sketch of Montana, and anon a remark- 
able book about Japan ; but it is wonderful be- 
cause it discovers within the limits of Boston only 
what is universal. To understand perfectly how 
fine such work as this is, you need never have 
been anywhere, yourself, or have read any other 
book ; any more than you would have to be one 
of the " Boys of '29 " to appreciate the charming 
class-poems that have been delighting the world, 
as well as the " Boys," for fifty years. In " Little 
Boston " he has, it is true, impaled some of the 
characteristics which are generally known as Bos- 
tonian ; but his very success in doing this is of a 
kind to imply that he had studied his Bostonian 
only in Paris or St. Louis ; for the peculiar traits 
described are those no Bostonian is supposed to 
be able to see for himself, still less to acknowl- 
edge. If Dr. Holmes were to have spent a win- 
ter in New York, he would have carried back with 
him, not material for a " keen satire on New York 
society," but only more material of what is hu- 
man. Nay, he probably would not have carried 
back with him anything at all which he had not 
already found in Boston, since he seems to have 
found everything there. 

So there is no need of knowing how or where 
Dr. Holmes lived, or what books he read, to 



DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 169 

understand and enjoy his work. But all the same, 
one likes to know where he lived, from a warm, 
affectionate, personal interest in the man ; just as 
we like to know of our dearest friends, not only 
that they dwell in a certain town, but that their 
parlor is furnished in red, and that the piano 
stands opposite the sofa. Of his earliest home, 
at Cambridge, he has himself told us in words 
which we certainly will not try to improve upon. 
Later came the home of his early married life in 
Montgomery Place, of which he has said : "When 
he entered that door, two shadows glided over the 
threshold ; five lingered in the doorway when he 
passed through it for the last time, and one of 
the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer 
than his own." A few brief, half-mystical allu- 
sions such as this are all that we gain from his 
writings about his personal surroundings, as a few 
simple allusions to certain streets and buildings 
are all that localize the " Autocrat " as a Bos- 
tonian. For the man who has almost exception- 
ally looked into his own heart to write has found 
in his heart, as he has in his city, never what was 
personal or special, always what was human and 
universal. 

But it will be no betrayal of trust for us to fol- 
low out the dim outline a little, and tell how the 
five shadows flitted together from Montgomery 
Place to Charles Street. Then, after another 



I70 DR, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 

dozen years, still another change seemed desirable. 
Dr. Holmes felt as few men do the charm of asso- 
ciation, and the sacredness of what is endeared by 
age; but the very roundness of his nature which 
made him appreciate not only what is human, but 
everything that is human, made him keenly alive 
to the charm of what is new if it is beautiful. A 
rounded nature finds it hard to be consistent. He 
wrote once : " It is a great happiness to have been 
born in an old house haunted by recollections," 
and he asserted more than once the dignity of hav- 
ing, not only ancestors, but ancestral homes ; yet 
if we were to have reminded him of this in his 
beautiful new house with all the latest luxuries 
and improvements, we can imagine the kindly 
smile with which he would have gazed round the 
great, beautiful room, with its solid woods and 
plate-glass windows, and said gently : " I know I 
ought to like the other, and I do, but how can I 
help liking this, too } " Yes, the charming new 
architecture and the lovely new houses were too 
much for them; they would flit again — though 
with a sigh. Not out of New England — no, in- 
deed ! not away from Boston — certainly not. 
Hardly, indeed, out of Charles Street; for 
although a " very plain brown-stone front would 
do," provided its back windows looked upon the 
river, the river they must have. 

Dr. Holmes wanted, not big front windows 



VR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 171 

from which to study the Bostonians, but a big bay- 
window at the back, from which he could see the 
ducks and gulls and think how like to human na- 
ture are all their little lives and loves and sorrows. 
So little is there in his work of what is personal, 
that it is possible there are people — in England — 
who really think the " Autocrat " dwelt in the 
boarding-house of his books. But those who be- 
lieve with him that, as a rule, genius means ances- 
tors, are not surprised to know that Dr. Holmes 
himself had many more than the average allowance 
of ancestors, and that, as a descendant of Dudley, 
Bradstreet, the Olivers, Quincys, and Jacksons, 
his " hut of stone " fronted on one of Boston's most 
aristocratic streets, though the dear river behind 
it flows almost close to its little garden gate. 
Under his windows all the morning trooped the 
loveliest children of the city in the daintiest ap- 
parel, wheeled in the costliest of perambulators by 
the whitest-capped of French nurses. Past his 
door every afternoon the " swellest " turn-outs 
of the great city passed on their afternoon parade. 
Near his steps, at the hour for afternoon tea, the 
handsomest coupes came to anchor and deposited 
their graceful freight. But this is not the pan- 
orama that the Doctor himself was watching. 
Whether in the beautiful great dining-room, 
where he was first to acknowledge the sway at 
breakfast, luncheon and dinner, of a still gentler 



172 DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

Autocrat than himself, or in the library upstairs, 
which was the heart of the home, he was always on 
the river side of the house. The pretty little 
reception-room downstairs on the Beacon Street 
side, he would tell you himself, with a merry 
smile, is a good place for your " things " ; you 
yourself must come directly up into the library, 
and look on the river, broad enough just here 
to seem a beautiful lake. I know of no other 
room in the heart of a great city where one 
so completely forgot the nearness of the world 
as in this library. Even if the heavy doors 
stood open into the hall, one forgot the front 
of the house and thought only of the beauti- 
ful expanse of water that seemed to shut off all 
approach save from the gulls. News from the 
humming city must come to you, it would seem, 
only in sound of marriage or funeral bells in the 
steeples of the many towns, distinct but distant, 
looming across the water. And this, not because 
the talk by that cheerful fire was of the " Over- 
Soul" or the "Infinite," so unworldly, so intro- 
spective, so wholly of things foreign or intellec- 
tual. Nothing could be more human than the 
chat that went on there, or the laugh that rang 
out so cheerily at such frequent intervals. Even 
with the shadow of a deep personal grief over 
the hearthstone, a noble cheerfulness that would 
not let others feel the shadow kept the room 



DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. i73 

bright though the heart was heavy. Are there pic- 
tures ? There is certainly one picture ; for al- 
though a fine Copley hangs on one wall, and one 
of the beautiful framed embroideries (for which 
Dr. Holmes's daughter-in-law is famous) on an- 
other, who will not first be conscious that in 
a certain corner hangs the original portrait of 
Dorothy Q.? Exactly as it is described in the 
poem, who can look at it without breathing 
gratefully 

" O Damsel Dorothy, Dorothy Q., 
Great is the gift we owe to you," 

and thinking almost with a shudder that if, 

" a hundred years ago, 
Those close-shut lips had answered No," 

there would have been no Dr. Holmes. Some- 
body there might have been ; but though he had 
been only " one-tenth another to nine-tenths " 
him^ assuredly the loss of even a tenth would 
have been a bitter loss. 

Books there are in this library, of course; but 
you were as little conscious of the books as you were 
of the world. You were only really conscious of the 
presence in the room, and the big desk on which 
was lying the pen that wrote both " The Autocrat of 
the Breakfast Table " and " The Professor." As you 
took it up, it was pretty to see the look that stole 
over Dr. Holmes's face; it was the twinkle of a 



174 DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 

smile that seemed to mean, " Yes, it was the pen 
that did it! / never could have done it in the 
world ! " His success gave him a deep and genuine 
pleasure, largely due to the surprise of it. At forty- 
six he believed he had done all that could be ex- 
pected of him, and was content to rest his repu- 
tation — as well he might — on those earlier poems, 
which will always make a part of even his latest 
fame. But the greater fame which followed was 
— not greatness thrust upon him, for genius such 
as his is something more than the patience which 
is sometimes genius, — but certainly greatness 
dragged out of him. The editors of the proposed 
Atlantic insisted that he should write for it. The 
Doctor did not yield, till, as he himself tells it, 
with another twinkling smile, they invited him 
to a ** convincing dinner at Porter's." Feeling 
very good-natured immediately after, he promised 
to *' try," and a little later sent off a few sheets 
which he somewhat dubiously hoped would "do." 
The storm of greeting and applause that followed 
even these first sheets filled him with amazement, 
but with genuine delight. It was beautiful to see 
how deeply it touched him to know that thousands 
of readers think " The Autocrat " the most charm- 
ing book they own. For this was not the arrogant 
satisfaction of the "master" who anounnces : 
*' Listen ! I have composed the most wonderful 
sonata that the world has ever heard ! " Still les§ 



DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 175 

was it the senseless arrogance of a foolish violin 
that might say : '' Listen ! you shall hear from me 
the most superb music you can imagine ! " Rather 
was it the low-voiced, wondering content of an 
aeolian harp, that lying quietly upon the window- 
sill, with no thought that it is there for anything 
but to enjoy itself, suddenly finds wonderful har- 
monies stealing through its heart and out into the 
world, and sees a group of gladdened listeners gath- 
ering about it. " How wonderful ! how wonderful 
that / have been chosen to give this music to the 
world ! Am I not greatly to be envied ? " As the 
harp thus breathes its gratitude to the breeze that 
stirs it, so Dr. Holmes looked his gratitude to the 
pen that " helped " him; with something of the 
same wonder at personal success that made Thack- 
eray exclaim : " Down on your knees, my boy ! 
That is the house where I wrote ' Vanity Fair ' ! " 
Do we not all love Thackeray and Holmes the bet- 
ter for caring so much about our caring for them? 
But it is growing late and dark. Across the 
river — one almost says across the bay — the lights 
are twinkling, and we must go. As the cool breeze 
touches our faces, how strange it seems to see the 
paved and lighted street, the crowding houses, the 
throng of carriages, and to realize that the great, 
throbbing, fashionable world has been so near 
to us all the afternoon while we have been so far 
from it ! 



176 DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

Now, as we go down the steps, a sudden con- 
sciousness strikes us of what very pleasant places 
Boston literary lines seem to fall into ! Is it that 
literary people are more fortunate in Boston, or 
that in Boston only the fortunate people are liter- 
ary ? For as we think of brilliant names associ- 
ated with Beacon Street, Boylston Street, Com- 
monwealth Avenue, Newbury and Marlborough 
Streets, it certainly seems as if the Bohemia of 
plain living and high thinking — so prominent a 
feature of New York literary and artistic life — had 
hardly a foothold in aristocratic, literary Boston. 

Finally, if it seems wonderful that living almost 
exclusively in one locality. Dr. Holmes should 
have succeeded as few have succeeded in dealing 
with the mysteries of universal human nature, 
still more wonderful is it, perhaps, that dealing 
very largely with the foibles and follies of human 
nature, nothing that he ever wrote has given 
offence. True, this is partly owing to his in- 
tense unwillingness to hurt the feelings of any 
human being. No fame for saying brilliant things 
that came to this gentlest of autocrats and most 
genial of gentlemen, tinged with a possibility that 
any one had winced under his pen, seemed to 
him of any value, or gave him any pleasure. But, 
as a matter of fact, no bore has ever read any- 
thing Dr. Holmes has written about bores with 
the painful consciousness, " Alas ! I was that 



DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. I77 

bore ! " We may take to ourselves a good deal 
that he says, but never with a sense of shame or 
humiliation. On the contrary, we laugh the most 
sincerely of any one, and say *' Of course ! that 
is exactly it ! Why, I have done that thing my- 
self a thousand times ! " And so the genial, 
keen-eyed master of human nature writes with 
impunity how difficult he finds it to love his 
neighbor properly till he gets away from him, and 
tells us how he hates to have his best friend hunt 
him up in the cars and sit down beside him, and 
explains that, although a radical, he finds he 
enjoys the society of those who believe more 
than he does better than that of those who 
believe less ; and neighbor and best friend, radical 
and conservative, laugh alike and alike enjoy the 
joke, each only remembering how he finds it hard 
to love his neighbor, and how he hates to talk in the 
cars. The restless " interviewer," who may per- 
haps have gained entrance to the pleasant library, 
never found himself treated, after he left, with any 
less courtesy than that which allowed him to be 
happy while he was " interviewing," to the misery 
of his hapless victim. The pen that " never dared 
to be as funny as it could be," never permitted itself 
to be as witty as it might have been, at the expense 
of any suffering to others. The gentle Doctor, 
when the interviewer was gone, turneu again to his 
ducks in the beautiful aviary outside his window, 



178 DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

and only vented his long-suffering in some general 
remark thrown carelessly in, as he describes how 
the bird 

Sees a flat log come floating down the stream ; 
Stares undismayed upon the harmless stranger ; — 
Ah ! were all strangers harmless as they seem ! 

And the very latest stranger who may have inflict- 
ed the blow that drew out that gentlest of remon- 
strances, would be the first to laugh and to enjoy 
the remonstrance as a joke! 

And so came to the Autocrat what he prized as 
the very best of all his fame — the consciousness 
that he never made a " hit " that could wound. So 
truly was this his temperament, that if you praised 
some of the fine lines of his noble poem on " My 
Aviary," he would say gently : " But don't you 
think the best line is where I spare the feelings of 
the duck? " and you remember, — 

Look quick ! there's one just diving ! 

And while he's under — just about a minute — 

I take advantage of the fact to say 

His fishy carcase has no virtue in it, 

The gunning idiot's worthless hire to pay. 

And not even "while they are under" would Dr. 
Holmes ridicule his fellow-men. It is never we 
whom he was laughing at : it is simply human na- 
ture on its funny side ; and it is a curious fact that 
none of us resent being considered to have the foi- 



DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. i79 

bles of human nature provided they are not made 
to appear personal foibles. So, while remember- 
ing the intensity of the pleasure he has given us, 
let us remember, what he would care far more to 
hear, that he has never given any of us anything 
but pleasure. 

Alice Wellington Rollins. 



JULIA WARD HOWE 



i8i 



JULIA WARD HOWE 

AT **OAK GLEN," NEWPORT 

To those persons who have only visited the 
town of Newport, taken its ocean drive, lunched 
at its Casino, strolled on its beach, and stared at 
its fine carriages and the fine people in them, that 
fill Bellevue Avenue of an afternoon, the idea of 
choosing Newport as a place to rest in must seem 
a very singular one. If their visit be a brief one, 
they may easily fail to discover that after leaving 
the limits of the gay summer city, with its bril- 
liant social life, its polo matches, its races, balls, 
dinners, and fetes, there still remains a district, 
some twelve miles in length, of the most rural 
character. The land here is principally owned 
by small farmers, who raise, and sell at exorbitant 
and unrural prices, the fruit, vegetables, eggs, 
milk, butter and cream which the Newport market- 
men, adding a liberal percentage, sell again to 
their summer customers. The interior of the 
island is in many respects the most agreeable 
part of it ; the climate is better, being much 
freer from heavy fogs and sea mists, and the ther- 
mometer neither rises so high nor falls so low as 

183 



1 84 JULIA WARD HOWE. 

in the town. The neighborhood of Lawton's 
Valley is one of the most charming and healthy- 
parts ; and it is in this spot that Mrs. Howe has, 
for many years, made her summer home. The 
house stands a little removed from the cross-road 
which connects the East and West Roads, the 
two thoroughfares that traverse the island from 
Newport to Bristol Ferry. Behind the house 
there is a grove of trees — oaks, willows, maples, 
and pines — which is the haunt of many singing 
birds. The quiet house seems to be the centre 
of a circle of song, and the earliest hint of day is 
announced by their morning chorus. In this glen 
" The Mistress of the Valley," as Mrs. Howe has 
styled herself, in one of her poems, spends many 
of her leisure hours, during the six months which 
she usually passes at her summer home. Here 
she sits with her books and needle-work, and of 
an afternoon there is reading aloud, and much 
pleasant talk under the trees ; sometimes a visitor 
comes from town, over the five long miles of 
country road ; but this is not so common an 
occurrence as to take away from the excitement 
created by the ringing of the door-bell. There 
are lotus trees at Oak Glen, but its mistress can 
not be said to eat thereof, for she is never idle, 
and what she calls rest would be thought by 
many people to be very hard work. She rests 
herself, after the work of the day, by reading her 



JULIA WARD HOWE, 185 

Greek books, which have given her the greatest 
intellectual enjoyment of the later years of her 
life. In the summer of 1886 she studied Plato in 
the original, and last year she read the plays of 
Sophocles. 

The day's routine is something in this order : 
Breakfast, in the American fashion, at eight 
o'clock, and then a stroll about the place, after 
which the household duties are attended to ; and 
then a long morning of work. Letter-writing, 
which — with the family correspondence, business 
matters, the autograph fiends and the letter 
cranks — is a heavy burthen, is attended to first ; 
and then whatever literary work is on the anvil 
is labored at steadily and uninterruptedly until 
one o'clock, when the great event of the day 
occurs. This is the arrival of the mail, which is 
brought from town by Jackson Carter, a neighbor, 
who combines the functions of local mail-carrier, 
milkman, expressman, vender of early vegetables, 
and purveyor of gossip generally ; to which he 
adds the duty of touting for an African Metho- 
dist church. Jackson is of the African race, and 
though he signs his name with a cross, he is a 
shrewd, intelligent fellow, and is quite a model of 
industry. After the newspapers and the letters 
have been digested, comes the early dinner, fol- 
lowed by coffee served in the green parlor, which 
is quite the most important apartment of the es- 



1 86 JULIA WARD HOWE. 

tablishment. It is an open-air parlor, in the shape 
of a semicircle, set about with a close, tall green 
hedge, and shaded by the spreading boughs of an 
ancient mulberry tree. Its inmates are completely 
shielded from the sight of any chance passers-by ; 
and in its quiet shade they often overhear the 
comments of the strangers on the road outside, 
to whom the house is pointed out. It was in this 
small paradise that *' Mr. Isaacs " was written, and 
read aloud to Mrs. Howe, chapter by chapter, as 
it was written by her nephew, Marion Crawford. 
Sometimes there is reading aloud from the news- 
papers and reviews here, and then the busiest 
woman in all Newport goes back to her sanctum 
for two more working hours ; after which she 
either drives or walks till sunset. 

If it is a drive, it will be, most likely, an expe- 
dition to the town, where some household neces- 
sity must be bought, or some visit is to be paid. 
If a stroll is the order of the day, it will be either 
across the fields to a hill-top near by, from which 
a wonderful view of the island and the bay is 
to be had, or along the country road, past the 
schoolhouse, and towards Mrs. Howe's old home, 
Lawton's Valley. In these sunset rambles, Mrs. 
Howe is very sure to be accompanied by one or 
more of her grandchildren, four of whom, with 
their mother, Mrs. Hall, pass the summers at Oak 
Glen. She finds the children excellent company, 



JULIA WARD HOWE. 187 

and they look forward to the romp which follows 
the twilight stroll as the greatest delight of the 
day. The romp takes place in the drawing-room, 
where the rugs are rolled up, and the furniture 
moved back against the wall, leaving the wooden 
floor bare for the dancing and prancing of the 
little feet. Mrs. Howe takes her place at the 
piano, strikes the chords of an exhilarating Irish 
jig, and the little company, sometimes enlarged 
by a contingent of the Richards cousins from 
Maine, dance and jig about with all the grace and 
abandon of childhood. After supper, when the 
children are at last quiet and tucked up in their 
little beds, there is more music — either with the 
piano, in the drawing-room, or, if it is a warm night, 
on the piazza, with the guitar. As the evenings 
grow longer, in the late summer and autumn, there 
is much reading aloud, but only from novels of the 
most amusing, sensational or romantic descrip- 
tion. None others are admitted ; after the long 
day of work and study, relaxation and diversion 
are the two things needed. I have observed that 
with most hard literary workers and speculative 
thinkers, this class of novel is most in demand. 
The more intellectual romances are greedily de- 
voured by people whose customary occupations 
lead them into the realm of actualities, and whose 
working hours are devoted to some practical 
business. 



1 88 JULIA WARD HOWE. 

Last year Mrs. Howe had at heart the revival 
of the Town and Country Club, of which she is 
the originator and President, and which in 1886 
had omitted its meetings. These meetings, which 
take place fortnightly during the season, are held 
at the houses of different members, and are both 
social and intellectual in character. The sub- 
stantial part of the feast is served first, in the 
form of a lecture or paper from some distinguished 
person, after which there are refreshments, and 
talk of an informal character. Among others who 
in past seasons have read before the Club are 
Bret Harte, Prof. Agassiz, the Rev. Edward 
Everett Hale, the late Wm. B. Rogers, Mark 
Twain, Charles Godfrey Leland (*' Hans Breit- 
mann "), and the Rev. Drs. James Freeman Clarke, 
Frederic H. Hedge and George Ellis. 

Mrs. Howe's work for the summer of 1887 in- 
cluded a paper on a subject connected with the 
Greek drama, to be read at the Concord School 
of Philosophy, and an essay for the Woman's 
Congress which was held in the early fall. She 
is much interested in the arts and industries of 
women, and in connection with these maintains a 
wide correspondence. But it is not all work and 
no play, even at such a busy place as Oak Glen. 
There are whole days of delightful leisure. Some- 
times these are spent on the water on board of 
some friend's yacht ; or a less pretentious catboat 



JULIA WARD HOWE. 189 

is chartered, which conveys Mrs. Howe and her 
guests to Conanicut, or to Jamestown, where the 
day is spent beside the waves. Last summer a 
beautiful schooner yacht was lent to Mrs. Howe 
for ten days, and a glorious cruise was made, 
under the most smiling of summer skies. A day 
on the water is the thing that is most highly en- 
joyed by the denizens of Oak Glen ; but there 
are other days hardly less delightful, spent in 
some out-of-the-way rural spot, where picnics are 
not forbidden, though these, alas ! are becoming 
rare, since the churlish notice was posted up at 
Glen Anna, forbidding all trespassing on these 
grounds, which, time out of mind, have been 
free to all who loved them. There are still 
the Paradise Rocks, near the house of Edwin 
Booth, and thither an expedition is occasionally 
made. 

Country life is not without its drawbacks and 
troubles ; but these are not so very heavy after 
all, compared with some of the tribulations of 
the city, or of those who place themselves at the 
mercy of summer hotel keepers and boarding- 
house ladies. The old white pony, Mingo, will 
get into the vegetable garden occasionally, and 
eat off the heads of the asparagus, and trample 
down the young corn ; the neighbor's pig some- 
times gets through the weak place in the wall, 
with all her pinky progeny behind her, and takes 



I90 JULIA WARD HOWE. 

possession of the very best flower-bed ; the 
honeysuckle vine does need training ; and the 
grapes will not ripen as well as they would have 
done, if the new trellis projected recently had 
been set up. But after all, taking into considera- 
tion the fact that lo, the Jersey cow, is giving ten 
quarts of rich milk a day, and that the new cook 
has mastered the simplest and most delightful 
of dishes — Newport corn-meal flap-jacks, — Mrs. 
Howe's life at Oak Glen is as peaceful and happy 
an existence as one is apt to find in these nihil- 
istic days of striking hotel waiters and crowded 
summer resorts. 

Beautiful as Newport is in these soft days of 
early summer, it is even lovelier in the autumn, 
and every year it is harder to leave Oak Glen, to 
give up the wide arc of the heavens, and to look 
up into God's sky, between the two lines of brick 
houses of a city street. Each winter the place at 
Newport is kept open a little longer, and it is 
only the closing days of November that find Mrs. 
Howe established in her house in Boston. Beacon 
Street, with its smooth macadamized roadway, 
whereon there is much pleasure driving, and in 
the winter a perfect sleighing carnival, is as 
pleasant a street as it is possible to live on, but a 
country road is always a better situation than a 
city street, and a forest path perhaps is best of 
all. When she is once settled in her Boston 



JULIA WARD HOWE. 19^ 

home, the manifold interests of the complex 
city life claim every hour in the day. Her re- 
markable powers of endurance, her splendid en- 
joyment of life and health make her winters as 
full of pleasure as the more peaceful summer- 
tide. It is a very different life from that led at 
Oak Glen ; it has an endless variety of interests, 
social, private, public, charitable, philanthropic, 
musical, artistic, and intellectual. A half-dozen 
clubs and associations of women in the city and 
its near vicinity, which owe their existence in 
large part to Mrs. Howe's efforts, claim her pres- 
ence in their midst at least once in every year. 

Among the public occasions which have held 
the greatest interest for Mrs. Howe of late years 
was the dedication of the new Kindergarten for 
the Blind in 1887, at which she read one of her 
happiest '' occasional poems." The authors' read- 
ing in aid of the Longfellow memorial fund, at 
the Boston Museum, where, before an audience 
the like of which had never before been seen in 
the theatre, she read a poem in memory of Long- 
fellow, was an occasion which will not soon be 
forgotten by those who were present. Mrs. 
Howe was the only woman who took part in the 
proceedings, the other authors who read from 
their own works being Dr. Holmes, Mr. Lowell, 
Mark Twain, Colonel Higginson, Prof. Norton, 
Mr. E. E. Hale, Mr. Aldrich and Mr. Howells. 



192 JULIA WARD HOWE. 

Mrs. Howe has spoken several times at the Nine- 
teenth Century Club, and she is always glad to 
revisit New York, for though she is often thought 
to be a Bostonian, she never forgets that the first 
twenty years of her life were passed in New 
York, the city of her birth. 

Maud Howe. 



MR. HOWELLS 



193 



MR. HOWELLS 

IN BEACON STREET, BOSTON 

If any one wants to live in a city street, I do 
not see how he can well find a pleasanter one 
than Beacon Street, Boston. Its older houses 
come down Beacon Hill, past the Common and 
the Public Garden, in single file, like quaint Con- 
tinentals on parade, who, being few, have to 
make the most of themselves. Then it forms in 
double file again and goes on a long way, out 
toward the distant Brookline hills, which close in 
the view. Howells's number is 302. In this 
Back Bay district of made ground, the favored 
West End of the newer city, you cannot help 
wondering how it is that all about you is in so 
much better taste than in New York — so much 
handsomer, neater, more homelike and engaging 
than our shabby Fifth Avenue. Beacon Street 
is stately ; so is Marlborough Street, that runs 
next parallel to it ; and even more so is Com- 
monwealth Avenue — with its lines of trees down 
the centre, like a Paris boulevard, — next beyond 
it. The eye traverses long fretworks of good 

19s 



196 ^K- no WELLS. 

architectural design, and there is no feature to 
jar upon the quiet elegance and respectability. 
The houses seem like those of people in some 
such prosperous foreign towns as the newer 
Liverpool, Diisseldorf or Louvain. The comfort- 
able horizontal line prevails. There are green 
front doors, and red brick, and brass knockers. 
A common pattern of approach is to have a step 
or two outside, and a few more within the vesti- 
bule. That abomination, the ladder-like " high 
stoop *' of New York, seems unknown. 

These are the scenes amid which Mr. Howells 
takes his walks abroad. From his front windows 
he may see the upper-class types about which he 
has written — the Boston girl, ** with something 
of the nice young fellow about her," the Chance 
Acquaintance, with his eye-glass, the thin, elder- 
ly, patrician Coreys, the blooming, philanthropic 
Miss Kingsbury. The fictitious Silas Lapham 
built in this same quarter the mansion with 
which he was to consolidate his social aspirations. 
Perhaps some may have thought it identical with 
that of Howells, so close are the sites, and so 
feelingly does the author speak — as if from per- 
sonal experience — of dealings with an architect, 
and the like. But Howells's abode does not 
savor of the architect, nor of the mansion. It is 
a builder's house, though even the builder, in 
Boston, does not rid himself of the general tradi- 



MR. HO WELLS. 197 

tion of comfort and solidity. Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes lived in a house but little different, two 
doors above. That of Howells is plain and wide, 
of red brick, three stories and mansard roof, with 
a long iron balcony under the parlor windows. 
Its chief adornment is a vine of Japanese ivy, 
which climbs half the entire height of the facade. 
The singular thing about this vine is, that it is not 
planted in his own ground, but a section in that 
of his neighbor on each side. It charmingly 
drapes his wall, while growing but thinly on 
theirs, and forms a clear case of "' natural selec- 
tion " which might properly almost render its 
owners discontented enough to cut it down. 
The leaves, as I saw them, touched by the 
autumn, glowed with crimson like sumac. The 
house is approached by steps of easy grade. 
There is a little reception-room at the left of the 
hall, and the dining-room is on the same floor. 
You mount a flight of stairs, and come to the 
library and study, at the back, and the parlor 
in front. 

Vlan ! as the French have it — what a flood of 
light in this study ! The shades of the three 
wide windows are drawn up to the very top ; it 
is like being at the seaside ; there are no owlish 
habits about a writer who can stand this. It is, 
in fact, the seaside, so why should it not seem like 
it? The bold waters of the Back Bay, a wide 



198 



MR. HO WELLS. 



basin of the Charles River, dash up to the very- 
verge of the small dooryard, in which the clothes 
hang out to dry. It looks as if they might some 
day take a notion to come in and call on the cook 
in the kitchen, or even lift up the whole establish- 
ment bodily, and land it on some new Ararat. 
This stretch of water is thought to resemble the 
canal of the Guidecca, at Venice ; Henry James, 
with others, has certified to the view as Venetian. 
You take the Cambridge gas-works for Palladio's 
domes, and Bunker Hill Monument, which is 
really more like a shot-tower, for a campanile ; 
and then, at sunset, when the distant buildings are 
black upon the glowing, ruddy sky, the analogy 
is not so very remote. All the buildings on this 
new-made land are set upon piles, and the tides, 
in a measure, flow under them twice a day. It 
was a serious question at the beginning, whether 
there should not be canals here instead of streets ; 
but, considering that the canals would be frozen 
up a large part of the year, the verdict was 
against them. I am rather sorry for this : it 
would have been interesting to see what kind of 
gondoliers the Boston hackmen and car-drivers 
would have made. Would they have worn uni- 
forms ? Would they have sung, to avoid colli- 
sions, in rounding the corners of Exeter and Fair* 
field streets? Ah me! for those plaintive ballads 
that might have been ? It would have been inter- 



MR. HO WELLS. 



199 



esting to see the congregation of Phillips Brooks's 
church — the much-vaunted Trinity — going to 
service by water, and the visitors to the Art 
Museum, and the students to the Institute of 
Technology. All these are but a stone's-throw 
from Howells. Howells may congratulate him- 
self on a greater solidity for his share of the 
land than most, for fifty years ago, when there 
were tide-mills in this neighborhood, it was the 
site of a toll-house. Terra firma^ all about him, 
has an antiquity of but from twelve to twenty 
years. His house is perhaps a dozen years old, 
and he has owned it but four. 

Ste. Beuve, the most felicitous of critics, wishes 
to know a man in order to understand his work. 
I hardly think the demand a fair one ; there 
ought to be enough in every piece of good work 
to stand for itself, and its maker ought to have 
the right to be judged at the level that the work 
represents, rather than in his personal situation, 
which may often be even mean or ridiculous. 
Nevertheless, if it be desired, I know of no one 
more capable of standing the test than William 
Dean Howells. Perhaps I incline to a certain 
friendly bias — though possibly even a little ex- 
treme in this may be pardoned, for surely no one is 
more unreasonably carped at than he nowadays, — 
but he impresses me as corresponding to the ideal 
of what greatness ought to be ; how it ought to 



200 MR- HO WELLS. 

look and act. He not only is, but appears, really 
great. In the personal conduct of his life, too, 
he confirms what is best in his books. Thus, 
there are no obscurities to be cleared up ; no 
stories to be heard of egotism, selfishness or greed 
towards his contemporaries ; there is nothing to 
be passed over in discreet silence. He has an 
open and generous nature, the most polished yet 
unassuming manners, and an impressive presence, 
which is deprived of anything formidable by a 
rare geniality. In looks, he is about the middle 
height, rather square built, with a fine, Napoleonic 
head, which seems capable of containing any- 
thing. I have seen none of his many portraits 
that does him justice. Few men with his oppor- 
tunities have done so much, or been so quick to 
recognize original merit and struggling aspira- 
tion. There is no trace in him of uneasiness at 
the success of others, of envy towards rivals — 
though, indeed, it would te hard to say, from the 
very beginning of his career, where any rivals in 
his own peculiar vein were to be found. Such a 
largeness of conduct is surely one of the indica- 
tions of genius, a part of the serene calm which 
is content to wait for its own triumph and for- 
bear push or artifice to hasten it. 

To write of Howells " at home " seems to write 
particularly of Howells. There is a great deal of 
the homely and the home-keeping feeling in his 



MR. HO WELLS. 201 

books, which has had to do with making him the 
chosen novelist of the intelligent masses. To 
one who knows this and his personal habits, it 
would not seem most proper to look for him in 
courts or camps, in lively clubs, at dinners, on the 
rostrum, or in any of the noisier assemblages of 
men. (Even in his journeyings, in those charm- 
ing books, "Venetian Life" and "Florentine Mo- 
saics," he is a saunterer and gentle satirist, with- 
out the fire and zeal of the genuine traveler.) All 
these he enjoys, no one more so, at the proper 
time and occasion, but one would seek him most 
naturally in the quiet of his domestic circle. And 
even there the most fitting place seems yonder 
desk, where the work awaits him over which but 
now his thoughtful brow was bending. He is a 
novelist for the genuine love of it, and not in 
the way of arrogance or parade, nor even for its 
rewards, substantial for him though they are. 
One would say that the greatest of his pleasures 
was to follow, through all their ramifications, the 
problems of life and character he sets himself to 
study. In a talk I had with him some time ago, 
he said, incidentally : " Supposing there were a 
fire in the street, the people in the houses would 
run out in terror or amazement. All finer shades 
of character would be lost ; they would be merged, 
for the nonce, in the common animal impulse. 
No ; to truly study character, you must study 



202 MR. HO WELLS. 

men in the lesser and more ordinary circum- 
stances of their lives ; then it is displayed un- 
trammeled." 

This may almost serve as a brief statement of 
his theory in literature, which has been the cause, 
of late, of such heated discussion in two hemi- 
spheres. And if a man is to be judged by the 
circumstances of his daily life, surely it is no more 
than fair to apply the method to its advocate 
himself. There is nothing cobwebby, no dust of 
antiquity, nor medievalism, in this study and 
library ; it is almost as modern in effect as Silas 
Lapham's famous warehouse of mineral paints. 
Howells has *' let the dead past bury its dead "; 
he is intensely concerned with the present and 
the future. The strong light from the windows 
shows in the cases only a random series of books 
in ephemeral-looking bindings. There are Bae- 
decker's guides, dictionaries, pamphlets, and cur- 
rent fiction. The only semblance of a " collec- 
tion" in which he indulges is some literature of for- 
eign languages, which he uses as his tools. He has 
done lately the great service of introducing to 
us many of the masterpieces of modern Italian 
and Spanish fiction, in his Editor's Study in Har- 
per s Magazine also. He was long preparing, and 
has lately published, a series of papers on the mod- 
ern Italian poets. He cares nothing for bindings, 
or the rarities of the bibliopole's art. The only 



MR. HO WELLS. 203 

feelingheisheard to express toward books, as such, 
is that he does not like to see even the humblest 
of them abused. In his house you find no no- 
ticeable blue china or Chippendale, no trace of 
the bric-a-brac enthusiasm, of which we had occa- 
sion to speak at the home of Aldrich. In his 
parlor are tables and chairs, perfectly proper and 
comfortable, but worthy of no attention in them- 
selves. On the walls are some few old paintings 
from Florence, a pleasing photograph or two, 
an original water-color by Fortuny, which has a 
little history, and an engraving after Alma 
Tadema, presented by the painter to the author. 
These are a concession to the fine arts, not a 
surrender to them. Perhaps we may connect 
this as an indication with the strong moral pur- 
pose of his books, his resolute refusal to postpone 
the essential and earnest in conduct to the soft 
and decorative. He proposes, at times, as the 
worldly will have it, ideals that seem almost 
fantastically impracticable. 

I am speaking too much, perhaps, of this latest 
home, occupied for so brief a time. It is not the 
only one in which he has ever dwelt. Howells 
was born in Ohio in 1837. He was the son of a 
country editor. He saw many hardships in those 
days, but there was influence enough to have him 
appointed consul to Venice, under Lincoln. He 
married, while still consul, a lady of a prominent 



204 MR. HO WELLS. 

Vermont Family. The newspapers will have it 
from time to time that Mrs. Howells is a great 
critic of and assistant in his works. I shall only 
say of this, that she is of an agreeable character, 
and an intelligence and animation that seem fully 
capable of it. On returning to this country he 
took up his residence for a while in New York, 
and brightened the columns of The Nation with 
some of its earliest literary contributions. He 
had for some time written poems. These at- 
tracted the attention of Lowell, who was editor 
of The Atlantic. He became Mr. Field's assist- 
ant in 1866, when the latter assumed the editor- 
ship, and in 1872 succeeded to the chief place, in 
which he continued till 1881, when he resigned it 
to be followed by Aldrich. During this time of 
editorship, he lived mainly at Cambridge, first in 
a small house he purchased on Sacramento 
Street, and later, for some years, in one on Con- 
cord Avenue, which he built and still owns. 
This latter was a pleasant, serviceable cottage, a 
good place to work, but with nothing particularly 
striking about it. It was there I first saw him, 
having brought him, with due fear and awe, my 
first novel, '' Detmold." But how little reason 
for awe it proved there really was ! Nobody was 
ever more courteous, unaffected and reassuring 
than he. I remember we took a short walk af- 
terwards, a part of my way homeward. He 



MR. HO WELLS. 205 

pretended, as we reached Harvard College, that 
it would not be safe for me to entertain any 
opinions differing from his own, on the mooted 
question of the heavy roof of the new Memorial 
Hall, since the fate of my manuscript was in his 
dictatorial hands ! 

From Cambridge he removed to the pretty sub- 
urb of Belmont, some five miles out of Boston, 
to a house built for him by Mr. Charles Fair- 
child, on that gentleman's own estate. This 
house, called Red Top, from its red roof and 
the red timothy grass in the neighborhood, 
was described and pictured some years ago in 
Harper s Magazine, in Mr. Lathrop's article on 
Literary and Social Boston. As I recollect it, this 
Avas the most elaborate of his several abodes. 
There were carried out many of the luxurious 
decorative features so essential according to the 
modern ideal. He had a study done in white in 
the colonial taste, and a square entrance-hall with 
benches and fire-place ; but I fancy, even here, he 
enjoyed most the wide view from his windows, 
and his walks in the hilly country. It was the 
eye of the imagination rather than of the body 
that with him most sought gratification. He 
lived on the hillside at Belmont four years. His 
moving away from there about coincides with 
the time of his giving up the editing of The 
Atlantic. He went abroad with his family, 



2o6 J^R- HO WELLS. 

remained a year, and then returned to Boston. 
It will be seen that he has not shown much more 
than the usual American fixity of residence, and 
perhaps we need not despair of his finally com- 
ing to New York, to which many of his later 
interests would seem to call him. 

With his retirement from the burden of editing 
begins, as many think, a new and larger period in 
his literary work. I am not to touch upon his 
original theories of literary art, or to interpret 
the much talked-of mot on Dickens and Thackeray. 
As to the latter, I know that so magnanimous 
and appreciative a nature as his could never have 
really intended to cast a slur upon exalted merit. 
He has an intense delight in human life, as it is 
lived, and not as represented by historians or 
antiquarians, or colored by conventional or aca- 
demic tradition of any kind. He is still so young a 
man and so powerful a genius that it may well 
be a yet grander period is opening before him. 
For my own part, I never quite get over the lik- 
ing for the " Robinson Crusoe " touch, the " once 
upon a time," the poem, as it were, in the fiction 
I read, and I think shall continue to like best 
of his stories ** The Undiscovered Country," in 
which the feeling of romance — together with all 
the reality of life — most prevails. However this 
may be, I cannot always repress a certain impa- 
tience that there should be any who fail to see his 



MR. HO WELLS, 207 

extraordinary ability ; it seems to me it can only 
be because there is some veil before their eyes, 
because they have not put themselves in the way 
of taking the right point of view. Whether 
we like it best of all fiction or not, where 
are we to find another who works with such 
power ? Where, if we deny him the first 
place, zealously look up all his defects, and 
take issue with him on a dozen minor points, 
are we to find another so original and creative 
a writer ? 

He writes only in the morning, his work 
being done conscientiously and with painstaking. 
After that he devotes himself to his family, to 
whom he is greatly attached, and of whom he is 
justly proud. Besides a son, who is to be an 
architect, there is a daughter, who inclines to 
the literary taste ; and another, a sweet-faced 
little maid, known to fame through the pub- 
lication of a series of her remarkable, naive, child- 
ish drawings, in the volume entitled " A Little 
Girl Among the Old Masters." Their father 
is not a voluble talker ; he does not aspire to 
shine ; there is little that is Macaulayish, there 
are few tours de force in his conversation. On 
the other hand, he has what some one has de- 
scribed as the dangerous trait of being an excel- 
lent listener. It might be said of him, as it was 
of Mme. Recamier, that he listens with seduction. 



2o8 MR. HO WELLS. 

He IS not bent upon displaying his own resour- 
ces, but possibly upon penetrating the mind and 
heart before him. Perhaps this is the natural, re- 
ceptive mood of the true student of character. 
And then it is all so gracefully done, with such a 
sympathy and tact, that when, afterwards, you 
come to reflect that you have been talking a great 
deal too much for your own good, there comes, 
too, with the flush, the reassuring fancy that per- 
haps, after all, you have done it pretty well. His 
own conversation I should call marked by sin- 
cerity of statement and earnestness in speculation, 
at the same time that it is brightened by the 
most genial play of humor. His humor warms 
like the sunshine ; we all know how steely cold 
may be the brilliancy of mere wit. He is a hu- 
morist, I sometimes think, almost before every- 
thing else. He takes to the humorists (even 
those of the broader kind) with a kindred feeling. 
Both Mark Twain and Warner have been his 
intimate friends. He wanted to know Stockton 
and Gilbert before he had met them. In this 
connection, I may close, apropos of him, with one 
of the slighter bons mots of Gilbert. On the first 
visit of that celebrity to this country, in company 
with his collaborator, Sullivan, he chanced to ask 
me something about the works of Howells. In 
reply, I mentioned among others " Their Wed- 
ding Journey "- — a book that every young couple 



MR. HO WELLS. 209 

put Into their baggage when starting off on the 
tour. ** Sullivan and I are not such a very young 
couple," returned Gilbert, "but I think we'll 
have to put one into our baggage, too." 

William Henry Bishop. 

[Mr. Howells now lives in apartments in New 
York, where he is editor of " The Easy Chair " 
in Harper s Mo7ithIy and a contributor to various 
magazines. — Editors. ] 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND 



211 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND 

IN PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 

To describe the home of a homeless man is not 
over easy. For the last sixteen or eighteen years 
Mr. Leland has been as great a wanderer as the 
gypsies of whom he loves to write. During this 
time he has pitched his tent, so to speak, in many 
parts of America and Europe and even of the 
East. He has gone from town to town and from 
country to country, staying here a month and 
there a year, and again in some places, as in Lon- 
don and Philadelphia, he has remained several 
years. But, as he himself graphically says, it is 
long since he has not had trunks in his bed- 
room. 

However, if to possess a house is to have a 
home, then Mr. Leland must not be said to be 
homeless. He owns a three-storied, white-and- 
green-shuttered, red-brick house with marble steps, 
of that conventional type which is so peculiarly a 
feature of Philadelphia — his native town. It is in 
Locust Street above Fifteenth — one of the emi- 
nently respectable and convenient neighborhoods 
for which Philadelphia is famous, with St. Mark's 

213 



214 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 



Church near at hand and a public school not far 
off. But besides this respectability which Phila- 
delphians in general hold so dear, Locust Street 
boasts of another advantage of far more, impor- 
tance to Mr. Leland in particular. Just here it is 
without the horse-car track which stretches from 
one end to the other of almost all Philadelphia 
streets, and hence it is a pleasant, quiet quarter 
for a literary man. Here Mr. Leland lived for 
just six months, surrounded by all sorts of quaint 
ornaments and oddities (though it was then years 
before the mania for bric-a-brac had set in), and 
by his books, these including numbers of rare and 
racy volumes from which he has borrowed so 
many of the quotations which give an Old World 
color and piquancy to his writings. It was while 
he was living in his Locust Street home that his 
health broke down. His illness was the result of 
long, almost uninterrupted newspaper work. He 
had worked on the Bulletin and on New York and 
Boston papers, and he had edited Vanity Fairy 
The Continental Monthly, Grahams Magazine and 
Forney's Press. In addition to this regular work, 
he had found time to translate Heine, to write 
his ** Sunshine in Thought," his " Meister Karl's 
Sketch-book," and his ** Breitmann Ballads," which 
had made him known throughout the English- 
speaking world as one of the first living English 
humorists. But now he was obliged to give up 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 215 

all literary employments, and, having inherited an 
independent fortune from his father, he was able 
to shut up his house and go on a pleasure-trip to 
Europe, where he began the wanderings which 
have not yet ceased. 

Nowadays, therefore, one might well ask, 
" Where is his home ? — in a Philadelphia hotel or 
lodgings, or at the Langham, in London — in a 
gypsy tent, or in an Indian wigwam ? — on the 
road, or in the town? But, ubi bene, ibi p atria ; 
where a man is happy, there is his country ; and 
his home too, for that matter ; and Mr. Leland, if 
he has his work, is happy in all places and at all 
times ; and furthermore, ever since his health was 
re-established, he has found or made work where- 
ever he has been. He is a man who is never idle 
for a minute, and he counts as the best and most 
important work of his life that which has occu- 
pied him during the last few years. Consequently, 
paradoxical as it may sound, even in his wander- 
ings he has always been at home. During the 
eleven years he remained abroad he lived in so 
many different places it would be impossible to 
enumerate them all. He spent a winter in Russia ; 
another in Egypt ; he summered on the Contin- 
ent, and in the pretty villages or gay seashore 
towns of England. At times his principal head- 
quarters were in London, now at the Langham 
and now at Park Square. It was at this latter resi- 



2i6 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 

dence that he gave Saturday afternoon receptions, 
at which one was sure to meet the most eminent 
men and women of the literary and artistic world 
of London, and which will not soon be forgotten 
by those who had the pleasure to be bidden to 
them. The first part of his last book about the 
gypsies is a pleasant, but still imperfect, guide to 
his wanderings of this period. There, in one 
paper, we find him spending charming evenings 
with the fair Russian gypsies in St. Petersburg ; 
in another, giving greeting to the Hungarian 
Romanies who played their wild czardas at the 
Paris Exposition. Or we can follow his peaceful 
strolls through the English meadows and lanes 
near Oatlands Park, or his adventures with his 
not over-respectable but very attractive friends 
at the Hampton races. One gypsy episode car- 
ries him to Aberistwyth, a second to Brighton, 
a third to London streets or his London study. 
Thus he tells the tale, as no one else could, of his 
life on the road. 

In December, 1878, he returned to Philadelphia, 
where he established himself in large and pleasant 
rooms in Broad Street, not knowing how long 
he might stay in America, and unwilling, be- 
cause of this uncertainty, to settle down in his 
own house. He lived there, however, for four 
years and a half, travelling but little save in the 
summer, when, to escape from the burning brick- 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 217 

oven which Philadelphia becomes at that season, 
he fled to Rye Beach or to the White Mountains, 
to Mount Desert or to far Campobello, in New- 
Brunswick, where, in the tents almost hidden by 
the sweet pine woods, he listened to the Algonkin 
legends which he published in book form three 
or four years ago. The house in which he 
made his home for the time being is a large red- 
brick mansion on the left side of Broad Street, be- 
tween Locust and Walnut streets. His apart- 
ments were on the ground floor, and the table at 
which he worked, writing his Indian book or 
making the designs for the series of art manuals 
he was then editing, was drawn close to one of 
the windows looking out upon the street. There, 
between the hours of nine and one in the morn- 
ing, he was usually to be found. From the street 
one could in passing catch a glimpse of the fine 
strong head which so many artists have cared to 
draw, and which Le Gros has etched ; of the 
long gray beard, and of the brown velveteen coat 
— not that famous coat to which Mr. Leland 
bade so tender a farewell in his gypsy book, but 
another, already endeared to him by many a 
lively recollection of gypsy camps and country 
fairs. Here there was little quiet to be had. 
Broad Street is at all times noisy, and it is more- 
over the favorite route for all the processions, mili- 
tary or political, by torchlight or by daylight, that 



2i8 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 

ever rejoice the hearts of Philadelphia's children. 
It is a haunt, too, of pitiless organ-grinders and 
importunate beggars. Well I remember the 
wretched woman who set up her stand, and her 
tuneless organ, but a few steps beyond Mr. 
Leland's window, grinding away there day after 
day, indifferent to expostulations and threats, 
until at last the civil authorities had to be ap- 
pealed to. For how much unwritten humor, for 
how many undrawn designs, she is responsible, 
who can say ? But then, on the other hand, the 
window had its advantages. Stray gypsies could 
not pass unseen, and from it friendly tinkers 
could be easily summoned within. But for this 
post of observation I doubt if Owen Macdonald, 
the tinker, would have paid so many visits to Mr. 
Leland's rooms, and hence if he would have 
proved so valuable an assistant in the preparation 
of the dictionary of shelta, or tinker's talk, a Cel- 
tic language lately discovered by Mr. Leland. 
** Pat " (or Owen) was a genuine tinker, and " no 
tinker was ever yet astonished at anything." He 
never made remarks about the room into which 
he was invited, but I often wondered what he 
thought of it, with its piles of books and 
drawings and papers, and its walls covered with 
grotesquely decorated placques and strange musi- 
cal instruments, from a lute of Mr. Leland's own 
fashioning to a Chinese mandolin, its mantel- 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 219 

shelf and low book-cases crowded with Chinese 
and Hindu deities, Venetian glass, Etruscan 
vases, Indian birch-bark boxes, and Philadel- 
phia pottery of striking form and ornament. 
It had been but an ordinary though large parlor 
when Mr. Leland first moved into it, but he soon 
gave it a character all its own, surrounding him- 
self with a few of his pet household gods, the 
others with his books being packed away in Lon- 
don and Philadelphia warehouses waiting the day 
when he will collect them together and set them 
up in a permanent home. 

The reason Mr. Leland remained so long in the 
Broad Street house was because he was interested 
in a good work which detained him year after 
year in Philadelphia. While abroad he had seen 
and studied many things besides gypsies, and he 
had come home with new ideas on the subject of 
education, to which he immediately endeavored 
to give active expression. His theory was that 
industrial pursuits could be made a part of 
every child's education, and that they must be 
comparatively easy. The necessity of introduc- 
ing some sort of hand-work into public school 
education had long been felt by the Philadelphia 
School Board, and indeed by many others through- 
out the country. It had been proved that to 
teach trades was an impossibility. It remained 
for Mr. Leland to suggest that the principles of in- 



220 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 

dustrial or decorative art could be readily learned 
by even very young children at the same time 
that they pursued their regular studies. He laid 
his scheme before the school directors, and they, 
be it said to their credit, furnished him with am- 
ple means for the necessary experiment. This 
was so successful, that before the end of the first 
year the number of children sent to him increased 
from a mere handful to one hundred and fifty. 
Before he left America there were more than 
three hundred attending his classes. It is true 
that Pestalozzi and Frobel had already arrived 
at the same theory of education. But, as Carl 
Werner has said, Mr. Leland was the first person 
in Europe or America who seriously demonstrated 
and proved it by practical experiment. 

These classes were held at the Hollingsworth 
schoolhouse in Locust Street above Broad, but a 
few steps from where he lived. It is simply im- 
possible not to say a few words here about it, 
since Mr. Leland was as much at home in the 
schoolhouse as in his own rooms. Four afternoons 
every week were spent there. On Tuesdays and 
Thursdays he himself gave lessons in design to 
the school children, going from one to the other 
with an interest and an attention not common 
even among professional masters. When, after 
the rounds were made, there were a few minutes 
to spare — which did not often happen — he went 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 22 1 

into the next room, where other children were 
busy under teachers, working out their own de- 
signs in wood or clay or leather. I think in many 
of the grotesques that were turned out from that 
modeling table — in the frogs and the serpents and 
sea-monsters twining about vases, and the lizards 
serving as handles to jars — Mr. Leland's influence 
could be easily recognized. On Saturdays he was 
again there, superintending a smaller class of re- 
poussd workers. In England he had found what 
could really be done by cold hammering brass on 
wood, and in America he popularized this discov- 
ery. When he first began to teach the children, 
this sort of work being as yet little known, I re- 
member there was one boy, rather more careless 
but more businesslike than his fellow-hammerers, 
who during his summer holidays made over two 
hundred and eighteen dollars by beating out on 
placque after placque a few designs (one an Arabic 
inscription), which he had borrowed from Mr. Le- 
land. But after the children's class was enlarged 
and a class was started at the Ladies' Decorative 
Art Club established by Mr. Leland, work had to 
be more careful and original to be profitable. On 
Mondays the Decorative Art Club engaged Mr. 
Leland's time, many of its members meeting to 
learn design in the Hollingsworth school-rooms, 
which were larger and better lighted than those 
in their club-house. This club, which in its second 



2 22 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 

year had no less than two hundred members, also 
owes its existence entirely to Mr. Leland, who is 
still its president. When it is remembered that 
both in the school and in the club he worked 
from pure motives of interest in his theory and its 
practical results, and with no other object in view 
but its ultimate success, the extent of his earnest- 
ness and zeal may be measured. 

It may be easily understood that this work, to- 
gether with his literary occupations, left him little 
time for recreation. But still there were leisure 
hours ; and in the fresh springtime it was his 
favorite amusement to wander from the city to 
the Reservoir, with its pretty adjoining wood be- 
yond Camden, or to certain other well-known, 
shady, flowery gypseries in West Philadelphia or 
far-out Broad Street, where he knew a friendly 
Sarshan ? (" How are you ? ") would be waiting 
for him. Or else on cold winter days, when sen- 
sible Romanies had taken flight to the South or 
were living in houses, he 'liked nothing better than 
to stroll through the streets, looking in at shop- 
windows ; exchanging a few words in their ver- 
nacular with the smiling Italians selling chestnuts 
and fruit at street corners, or stray Slavonian 
dealers (Slovak or Croat) in mouse and rat-traps, 
or with other " interesting varieties of vaga- 
bonds"; stopping in bric-a-brac shops and meet- 
ing their Qerman-Jew owners with a brotherly 



CHARLES GODFREY L ELAND. 223 

^^Sholem aleichemf' and bargaining with unmis- 
takable familiarity with the ways of the trade ; or 
else, perhaps, ordering tools and materials, buying 
brass and leather for his classes. Indeed, he was 
scarcely less constant to Chestnut Street than 
Walt Whitman or Mr. Boker. But while Walt 
Whitman in his daily walks seldom went above 
Tenth Street, Mr. Leland seldom went below it, 
turning there to go to the Mercantile Library, 
which he visited quite as often as the Philadelphia 
Library, of which he has long been a shareholder; 
while Mr. Boker seemed to belong more particu- 
larly to the neighborhood of Thirteenth or Broad 
Street, where he was near the Union League and 
the Philadelphia Club. Almost everybody must 
have known by sight these three men, all so 
striking in personal appearance. Mr. Leland 
rarely went out in the evenings. Then he rested 
and was happy in his large easy chair, with his 
cigar and his book. There never was such an 
insatiable reader, not even excepting Macaulay. 
It was then, and is still, his invariable custom to 
begin a book immediately after dinner and finish 
it before going to bed, never missing a line ; and 
he reads everything, from old black-letter books 
to the latest volume of travels or trash, from 
Gaboriau's most sensational novel to the most 
abstruse philosophical treatise. His reading is as 
varied as his knowledge. 



224 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 



I have thus dwelt particularly on his life in 
Philadelphia, because, during the four and a half 
years he spent there — a long period for him to 
give to any one place — he had time to fall into 
regular habits and to lead what may be called a 
home life ; and also because his way of living 
since he has been back in England has changed 
but slightly. He now has his headquarters at 
the Langham. He still devotes his mornings to 
literary work and many of his afternoons to teach- 
ing decorative art. He is one of the directors of 
the Home Arts Society, which but for him would 
never have been ; Mrs. Jebb, one of its most 
zealous upholders, having modeled the classes 
which led to its organization wholly upon his 
system of instruction, and in cooperation with 
him. The society has its chief office in the 
Langham chambers, close to the hotel ; there Mr. 
Leland teaches and works just as he did in the 
Hollingsworth school-rooms. Lord Brownlow is 
the president of this association, Lady Brownlow, 
his wife, taking an active interest in it ; and Mr. 
Walter Besant is the treasurer. Mr. Leland is 
also the father or founder of the famous Rabelais 
Club, in which the chair was generally taken by 
the late Lord Houghton. For amusement, the 
Philadelphian now has all London, of which he is 
as true a lover as either Charles Lamb or Leigh 
Hunt was of old ; and for reading purposes he has 



CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 225 

the British Museum and Mudie's at his disposal ; 
so in these respects it must be admitted he is 
better off than he was in Philadelphia. He knows, 
too, all the near and far gypsy haunts by English 
wood and wold, and he is certain he will be 
heartily welcomed to the Derby or any country 
fair. But he has many friends and admirers in 
England outside of select gypsy circles. Unfor- 
tunately he has lost the two friends with whom 
he was once most intimate, Prof. E. H. Palmer, 
the Arabic scholar, having been killed by the 
Arabs, and Mr. Trubner, the publisher, having 
died while Mr. Leland was in America. Of his 
other numerous English acquaintances, he is most 
frequently with Mr. Walter Besant, the novelist, 
and Mr. Walter Pollock, the editor of The Satur- 
day Review, for whom he occasionally writes a 
criticism or a special paper. However, despite 
the many inducements that can be offered him, 
he goes seldom into society. He prefers to give 
all his energies to the writing by which he amuses 
so many readers, and to his good work in the 
cause of education. 

Elizabeth Robins Pennell. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



227 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

AT •* ELMWOOD " 

Unfortunately, Mr. Lowell is not at home. He 
is in his own country and among his own people ; 
but he is not at Elmwood. For nearly a decade 
now his friends have ceased to pass under the 
portal of those great English trees and find him 
by the chimney-fire, '^ toasting his toes," or en- 
gaged in less meditative tasks amid the light and 
shadow of his books. Loss to them has been 
gain to us ; for in the more open life of a man of 
the world and of affairs, at Madrid and London, 
the public has seemed to see him more intimately, 
and has been pleased to feel some share in his 
honor as a representative American gentleman of 
what must be called an ageing, if not the old, 
school. But for lovers of the author, as for his 
neighbors and acquaintances and his contempo- 
raries in literature, Lowell is indissolubly set in 
Elmwood, and is not to be thought of elsewhere 
except as in absence. There, sixty-seven years 
ago, when Elmwood was but a part of the coun- 
try landscape of old Cambridge, he was born of 
an honorable family of the colonial time, and 

229 



230 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

learned his alphabet and accidence, and imbibed 
from the cultivated and solid company that 
gathered about his father the simplicity of man- 
ners and severe idealism of mind of which he 
continues the tradition ; there, in college days, 
he '* read everything except his text-books," and 
with his (Bqtiales of the class of 1838 won a some- 
what reluctant sonship from a displeased Alma 
Mater ; being in his youth, as he once remarked 
to the rebellious founders of The Harvard Advo- 
cate, " something of a revolutionist myself "; and 
it was from there he went out as far as Boston, 
to begin that legal career which was not to end 
in the glory of a justice's wig. And after the 
early volume of poems was published and a kindly 
fire had exhausted the edition, and when T/ie 
Pioneer — what a name that was to gather into its 
frontiersman-stroke Hawthorne, Story, Poe, Very 
and the brawny Mrs. Browning ! — had gone down 
in the first financial morass, still the pleasant 
upper room at Elmwood, looking off over the 
sweep of the Charles and the lines of the horizon- 
hills, was as far from being the scene of forensic 
discussion as it was from taking its conversational 
tone from the ancient clergymen who, with their 
long pipes, looked down on the poet's friends 
from an old panel over the fireplace. The Bar 
has lost many a deserter to the Muses, and it was 
a settled thing with the birds of Elmwood — and 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 231- 

the place is still a woodland city of them — that 
although they " half-forgave his being human," 
they would not forgive his being a lawyer. So, 
Lowell kept to his walks in the country and con- 
fided the knowledge of his haunts to the readers 
of his verses, and from the beginning rhymed the 
nobler human tone with the notes of nature ; and 
he married, and many reminiscences remain, among 
the men of that day of that brief happiness, one 
bright episode of which was his Italian journey. 
The first series of " The Biglow Papers " appeared, 
and so his literary life began definitely to share in 
public affairs and to take on the quasi-civic char- 
acter which was to become more and more his 
distinction, until it should reach its development, 
on the side of his genius, in the patriotic odes, 
and its acknowledgment, on the part of the peo- 
ple, in his offices of national trust. Seldom, 
indeed, has the peculiar privacy of a poet's life 
passed by so even and natural a growth into the 
publicity and dignity of the great citizen's. 

But, in the narrow space of this sketch, one 
must not crowd the lines ; and in the way of 
biography, of which little can be novel to the 
reader, it is enough to recall to mind the gen- 
eral course of Lowell's life ; how he founded The 
Atlantic, which was to prove a diary of the con- 
temporary literary age ; and in the Lowell Insti- 
tute first displayed on a true scale the solidity 



232 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

and acuteness of his critical scholarship, and gave 
material aid to the national cause and the war on 
slavery, as he had always done, by his brilliant 
satire, his ambushing humor and more marvelous 
pathos ; and became the Harvard professor, suc- 
ceeding Longfellow ; and after a residence in 
Leipsic settled again at Elmwood to give fresh 
books to the world, and to be, perhaps, the most 
memorable figure in the minds of several genera- 
tions of Harvard students. Nor can one leave 
unmentioned the more familiar features of the 
social life in these years of his second marriage — 
a life somewhat retired and quiet but filled full 
of amiability, wit and intellectual delight, led 
partly in Longfellow's study, or in the famous 
Saturday Club, or in the weekly whist meetings, 
and partly in Elmwood itself. That past lives in 
tradition and anecdotage, and in it Lowell ap- 
pears as the life and spirit of the wine, with a 
conversational play so rich in substance and in 
allusion that, it is said, one must have heard and 
seen with his own eyes and ears, before he can 
realize that what seems the studied abundance 
and changeableness of his essays is in fact the 
spontaneity of nature, the mother-tongue of the 
man. 

It will be expected, however, that the writer of 
this notice will take the reader to the privacy of 
Elmwood itself, not in this general way, but at 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 233 

some particular time before its owner discon- 
tinued his method of fire-side traveling under the 
care of safe and comfortable household gods, and 
tempted the real ocean to find an eight-years' 
exile. The house — an old-fashioned, roomy man- 
sion, set in a large triangular wooded space, with 
grassy areas, under the brow of Mount Auburn — 
has been familiarized through description and 
picture ; and the author himself, of medium 
height, well set, with a substantial form and a 
strikingly attractive face, of light complexion, 
full eyes, mobile and expressive features, with the 
beard and drooping mustache which are so marked 
a trait of his picture, and now, like the hair, turn- 
ing gray, — he, too, is no stranger. Some ten 
years ago this figure, in the "reefer" which he 
then wore, was well known in the college yard, 
giving an impression of stoutness, and almost 
bluffness, until one caught sight of the face with 
its half-recognition and good-will to the younger 
men ; and in his own study or on the leafy veranda 
of the house, one perceived only the simplest 
elements of unconscious dignity, the frankness of 
complete cultivation, and the perfect welcome. 
If one passed into his home at that time he would 
have found a hall that opened out into large 
rooms on either hand, the whole furnished in 
simple and solid fashion, with a look that be- 
tokened long inhabitancy by the family ; and on 



234 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 

the left hand he would have entered the study 
with its windows overlooking long green levels 
among the trees on the lawn — for though the 
estate is not very extensive in this direction, the 
planting has been such that the seclusion seems 
as inviolable as in the more distant country. The 
attachment of its owner to these " paternal acres " 
is sufficient to explain why when others left Cam- 
bridge in summer--and then it is as quiet as Pisa 
— he still found it *' good enough country " for 
him ; but besides this affection for the soil, 
the landscape itself has a charm that would con- 
tent a poet. To the rear of this room, or rather 
of its chimney, for there was no partition, was 
another, whose windows showed the grove and 
shrubbery at the back toward the hill; and this 
view was perhaps the more peaceful. 

Here in these two rooms were the usual fur- 
nishings of a scholar's study — tables and easy- 
chairs, pictures and pipes, the whole lending itself 
to an effect of lightness and simplicity, with the 
straw-matting islanded with books and (especially 
in the further room) strewn with scholar's litter, 
from the midst of which one day the poet, in 
search of *' what might be there," drew from 
nearly under my feet the manuscript of Clough's 
*' Amours de Voyage." The books filled the 
shelves upon the wall, everywhere, and a library 
more distinctly gathered for the mere love of 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 235 

literature is not to be found. It is not large as 
libraries go — some four thousand volumes. To 
tell its treasures would be to catalogue the best 
works of man in many languages. Perhaps its 
foundation-stone, in a sense, is a beautiful copy 
of the first Shakspeare folio ; Lord Vernon's 
** Dante " is among the ''tallest " volumes, and 
there are many rare works in much smaller com- 
pass. The range in English is perhaps the most 
sweeping, but the precious part to the bibliophile 
is the collection, a very rich one, of the old French 
and other romantic poetry. More interesting in 
a personal way are the volumes one picks up at 
random, which are mile-stones of an active literary 
life — old English romances, where the rivulet is 
not of the text but of the blue-pencil, the pre- 
liminary stage of a trenchant essay on some Hal- 
liwell, perhaps ; or possibly some waif of a useless 
task, like a reedited '' Donne," to whose manes the 
unpoetic publisher was unwilling to make a finan- 
cial sacrifice. But the limit is reached. That 
time in which the scene of this brief description 
is set, was the last long summer that Lowell spent 
in Elmwood. 

George E. Woodberry. 

[Mr. Lowell died August 12, 1891. — Editors.] 



DONALD G. MITCHELL (IK MARVEL) 



'37 



DONALD G. MITCHELL (IK MARVEL) 

AT "EDGEWOOD" 

Mr. Mitchell is eminently an " author at home." 
There are many of our popular writers — both 
citizens and country dwellers — whose environ- 
ment is a matter of comparative indifference to 
their readers. But the farmer of Edgewood has 
taken the public so pleasantly into his confidence, 
has welcomed them so cordially to his garden, 
his orchard and his very hearthstone, that — in a 
literary sense — we are all his guests and inmates. 
In the consulship of Plancus — as Thackeray 
would say — we Freshmen, after our pilgrimage to 
that shrine of liberty, the Judges' Cave on West 
Rock, with its kakographic inscription, — " Op- 
osition [stcl to tyrants is obedience to God," — 
used to turn our steps southward to burn our 
youthful incense upon the shrine of literature, 
and see whether the burs had begun to open 
on the big chestnut trees that fringed Ik Marvel's 
domain. In those days the easiest approach was 
through the little village of Westville, which 
nestles at the foot of the rock and seems, from 
a distance, to lay its church-spire, like a white 

239 



240 DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 

finger, against the purple face of the cliff. The 
rustic gate at the northern corner of Edgewood, 
whence a carriage road led to the ridge behind 
the house, stood then invitingly open, and a 
printed notice informed the wayfarer that the 
grounds were free to the public on Wednesday 
and Saturday afternoons. 

Now, as then, the reveries and dreams of Mr. 
Mitchell's early books continue to charm the 
fireside musings of many a college dreamer ; 
and successive generations of Freshmen still find 
their footsteps tending, in the golden autumn 
afternoons of first term, toward the Edgewood 
gates. But nowadays the pilgrim may take the 
Chapel Street horse-car at the college fence, and 
after a ten minutes' ride, dismounting at the ter- 
minus of the line and walking a block to west- 
ward, he finds himself at the brink of what our 
geologists call " the New Haven terrace." Thence 
the road descends into the water meadows, and, 
crossing on a new iron bridge the brackish sluice 
known as West River, leads straight on across a 
gravelly level, till it strikes, at a right angle, the 
foot of the Woodbridge hills and the Old Cod- 
rington Road (now Forest Street). On this road 
lies Edgewood, sloping to the east and south, 
lifted upon a shelf of land above the river plain, 
while behind it the hill rises steeply to the height 
of some hundred feet, and shuts off the west with 



DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 241 

the border of overhanging woods which gives the 
place its name. 

From his library window Mr. Mitchell can look 
across a little foreground of well-kept door-yard, 
with blossoming shrubs and vines and bright 
parterres of flowers set in the close turf; across a 
hemlock hedge and a grass-bank sloping down to 
the road ; across the road itself and the flat below 
it, checkered with his various crops, to the spires 
and roofs and elm-tops of New Haven and the 
green Fair Haven hills in the eastern horizon. 
Southward, following the line of the river, he 
sees the waters of the harbor, bounded by the 
white lighthouse on its point of rock. Northward 
is the trap " dyke " or precipice of West Rock, 
and northeastward, beyond the town, and dim 
with a violet haze, the sister eminence. East 
Rock. From the driveway which traverses the 
ridge behind the homestead the view is still wider 
and more distinct, taking in the salt marshes 
through which West River flows down to the bay, 
the village of West Haven to the south, and, be- 
yond, the sparkling expanse of the Sound and 
the sandhills of Long Island. Back of the ridge, 
westward, stretches for miles a region which used 
to be known to college walkers as *' The Wilder- 
ness," from its supposed resemblance to the scene 
of Grant's famous campaign : a region of scrubby 
woodland, intersected with sled roads and cut 



242 DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 

over every few years for fire-wood : a region — it 
may be said incidentally — dear to the hunters of 
the fugacious orchid. 

The weather-stained old farmhouse described in 
" My Farm of Edgewood " made way some dozen 
years ago for a tasteful mansion of masonry and 
wood-work. The lower story of this is built of 
stone taken mostly from old walls upon the farm. 
The doors and windows have an edging of brick 
which sets off the prevailing gray with a dash of 
red. The upper story is of wood. There are a 
steep-pitched roof with dormer-windows, a rustic 
porch to the east, a generous veranda to the south, 
and vines covering the stone. The whole effect 
is both picturesque and substantial, graceful and 
homely at once. The front door gives entrance 
to a spacious hall, flanked upon the south by the 
double drawing-rooms and upon the north by the 
library, with its broad, low chimney opening, its 
book-shelves and easy-chairs, its tables and desk 
and wide mantel, covered and strewn in careless 
order with books, photographs, manuscripts, and 
all the familiar litter of a scholar's study. At the 
rear of the hall is the long dining-room, running 
north and south, its windows giving upon the 
grassy hillside to the west. A conspicuous feature 
of this apartment is the full-length portrait, on the 
end wall, of Mr. Mitchell's maternal grandfather, 
painted about the beginning of the century, and 



DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 243 

representing its subject in the knee-breeches and 
silk stockings of the period. Half-length portraits 
of Mr. Mitchell's grandparents, painted about 1830, 
by Morse, the electrician, hang upon the side wall 
of the dining-room, and an earlier portrait of his 
mother surmounts the library mantel-piece. Mr. 
Mitchell's culture, it will be seen, does not lack 
that ancestral background which Dr. Holmes 
thinks so important to the New England Brahmin. 
Three generations of the name adorn the pages of 
the Yale Triennial. His grandfather, Stephen 
Mix Mitchell, graduated in 1763, was a Repre- 
sentative and Senator in Congress and Chief 
Justice of Connecticut. His father, the Rev. 
Alfred Mitchell, graduated in 1809, was a Con- 
gregational minister at Norwich, in which city 
Mr. Mitchell was born, April 12, 1822. The 
statement has been made that ** Doctor Johns " 
was a sketch from the Rev. Alfred Mitchell ; but 
this is not true. Mr. Mitchell's father died when 
his son was only eight years old, and though his 
theology was strictly Calvinistic, his personality 
made no such impression upon the boy as to 
enable him to reproduce it so many years after. 
Some features in the character of ** Dr. Johns " 
were suggested by Dr. Hall, of Ellington, at whose 
once famous school Mr. Mitchell was for some 
time a pupil. The name of DonaldusG. Mitchell 
also appears on the Triennial Catalogue for the 



244 DONALD G. MITCHELL (JK MARVEL). 

year 1792 as borne by a great-uncle of the present 
" Donaldus," who took his bachelor's degree in 
1 841. Mr. Mitchell's mother was a Woodbridge, 
and some four years since he completed an elab- 
orate and sumptuously-printed genealogy of that 
family, undertaken by his brother but left un- 
finished at his death. 

The French windows of the drawing-room open 
upon the veranda to the south, and this upon a 
lawny perspective which is at once an example of 
Mr. Mitchell's skillful landscape-gardening and a 
surprise to the stranger, who from the highway 
has caught only glimpses of sward and shrubbery 
through the hedge and the fringe of trees. The 
Edgewood lawn is a soft fold between the instep 
of the hill and the grassy bank that hangs over 
the road and carries the hedgerow. It is not 
very extensive, but the plantations of evergreens 
and other trees on either side are so artfully dis- 
posed, advancing here in capes and retiring there 
in bays and recesses, that the eye is lured along a 
seemingly interminable vista of gentle swales and 
undulations, bordered by richly-varied foliage, 
along the hillside farms beyond, and far into the 
heart of the south. Here and there on the steep 
slope to the right, and high above the lawn itself, 
are coppices of birch, hazel, alder, dogwood and 
other native shrubs, brought together years ago 
and protected by little enclosures, but now grown 



DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 245 

into considerable trees. North of the house is the 
neatly-kept garden, with its beds of vegetables and 
flowers, its rows of currant and gooseberry bushes, 
its box-edged alleys, and back of all a tall hedge 
of hemlock, clipped to a dense, smooth wall of 
dark green, starred with the lighter needles of 
this year's growth. Mr. Mitchell tells, with a 
pardonable pride, how he brought from the woods, 
in two baskets, all the hemlocks which compose 
this beautiful screen. He has two workshops, — 
his library and his garden ; and of the two he 
evidently loves the latter best, and works there 
every day before breakfast in the cool hours of 
the morning. 

Edgewood has been identified with its present 
owner for a generation. He was not always a 
farmer; but farming was his early passion, and 
after several years of writing and wandering, he 
settled down here in 1855 and returned to his 
first love. On leaving college he went to work on 
his grandfather's farm near Norwich. He gained 
at this time the prize of a silver cup from the New 
York Agricultural Society, for plans of farm build- 
ings. He became a correspondent of The Albany 
Cultivator (now The Country Gentlemafi), con- 
tributing letters from Europe during his first visit 
abroad, in 1844-6. This was undertaken in search 
of health. He was threatened with consumption, 
and winter found him at Torquay in the south of 



246 DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 

England, suffering from a distressing and persistent 
cough. From this he was relieved after a violent 
fit of sea-sickness, while crossing the Channel to 
the island of Jersey, where he spent half a winter. 
Another half-winter was passed in tramping about 
England, and eighteen months on the continent. 
These experiences of foreign travel furnished the 
material for his first book, ** Fresh Gleanings " 
(1847). After his return to this country he studied 
law in New York, but the confinement was in- 
jurious to his health, and in 1848 he went abroad 
a second time, traveling in England and Switzer- 
land and residing for a while in Paris. France 
was on the eve of a revolution, and Mr. Mitch- 
ell's impressions of the time were recorded in 
his second book, "The Battle Summer " (1850). 
Again returning to America, he took up his resi- 
dence in New York, and issued in weekly num- 
bers ''The Lorgnette; or, Studies of the Town, 
by an Opera-Goer." This was a series of satir- 
ical sketches, something after the plan of Irving's 
" Salmagundi " papers. They were signed by an 
assumed name, and even the publisher was not in 
the secret of their authorsihip. The intermediary 
in the business was William Henry Huntington, 
who lately died in Paris, and who was known for 
many years to all Americans sojourning in the 
French capital as an accomplished gentleman and 
man of letters. The *' Lorgnette " provoked much 



DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 247 

comment, and among Mr. Mitchell's collection of 
letters are many from his publisher, detailing the 
guesses of eminent persons who called at his shop 
to ascertain the authorship. 

The nucleus of the ** Reveries of a Bachelor " 
was a paper contributed to The Southern Literary 
Messenger^ and entitled " A Bachelor's Reverie, 
in Three Parts: i. Smoke, signifying Doubt; 2. 
Blaze, signifying Cheer ; 3. Ashes, signifying 
Desolation." Mr. Mitchell has a bibliographical 
rarity in his library in the shape of a copy of this 
first paper, in book form, bearing date Worms- 
loe, 1850, with the following colophon: "This 
edition of twelve copies of the Bachelor's Re- 
verie, by Ik : Marvel, hath been : by the Author's 
Leave : printed privately for George Wymberley 
Jones." This Mr. Jones was a wealthy and ec- 
centric gentleman, who amused himself with a 
private printing-press at his estate of Wormsloe, 
near Savannah. The '* Reveries," by the way, 
has been by all odds its author's most popular 
work, judged by the unfailing criterion of " sales." 
In 1851 Mr. Mitchell was invited by Henry J. 
Raymond to edit the literary department of the 
TimeSy then newly established ; but the labor 
promised to be too exacting for his state of 
health, and the offer was declined. In May, 
1853, Mr. Mitchell was appointed Consul for the 
United States at Venice. In June of the same 



248 DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 

year he was married to Miss Mary F. Pringle, of 
Charleston, and sailed again for Europe to enter 
upon the duties of his consulate. He was at- 
tracted to Venice by the opportunities for his- 
torical study, and while there he began the 
collection of material looking toward a history of 
the Venetian Republic. This plan never found 
fulfilment, but traces of Mr. Mitchell's Venetian 
studies crop out in many of his subsequent 
writings ; especially, perhaps, in his lecture on 
"Titian and his Times," read before the Art 
School of Yale College, and included in his latest 
volume, ** Bound Together" (1884). In 1854 he 
resigned his consulate, and in July of the follow- 
ing year, he purchased Edgewood. 

During the past thirty-three years Mr. Mitchell 
has led the enviable life of a country gentleman 
— a life of agriculture tempered by literature and 
diversified by occasional excursions into the field 
of journalism. He has seen his numerous chil- 
dren grow up about him ; he has entertained 
at his charming home many of our most distin- 
guished literati ; and he has kept open his com- 
munication with the reading public by a series 
of books and contributions to the periodical 
press, on farming, landscape-gardening, and the 
practical and aesthetic aspects of rural life. He 
edited "The Atlantic Almanac" for 1868 and 
1869, and in the latter year accepted the editor- 



DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 249 

ship oi Hearth and Home — a position which made 
it necessary for him to spend a part of every 
week in New York. He was one of the judges 
of industrial art at the Centennial Exhibition of 
1876, and Commissioner from the United States at 
the Paris Exposition of 1878. His taste and ex- 
perience in landscape-gardening have been called 
into play in the laying-out of the city park at 
East Rock, and at many private grounds in New 
Haven and elsewhere. Of late years the Uni- 
versity has had the benefit of his services in one 
way and another. He has been one of the Coun- 
cil of the School of Fine Arts, since the estab- 
lishment of that department, and has lectured be- 
fore the School. In the fall and winter of 1884, 
he delivered a course of lectures on English 
literature to the students of the University ; and 
the crowd of eager listeners that attended the 
series to the close showed that Mr. Mitchell had 
not lost that power of interesting and delighting 
young men which gave such wide currency to his 
"■ Reveries of a Bachelor " and '' Dream Life " a 
generation ago. Among the other lectures and 
addresses delivered on various occasions — several 
of which are collected in " Bound Together," — 
special mention may be made of the address on 
Washington Irving, which formed one of the 
pleasantest features of the centennial celebration 
at Tarrytown in 1883. Irving not only honored 



250 DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 

Mr. Mitchell with his personal friendship, but he 
was, in a sense, his literary master. For different 
as are the subjects upon which the two have 
written, Mr. Mitchell, more truly than any other 
American writer, has inherited the literary tra- 
dition of Irving's time and school. There is the 
same genial and sympathetic attitude toward his 
readers ; the same tenderness of feeling ; and, in 
style, that gentle elaboration and that careful, 
high-bred English which contrasts so strikingly 
with the brusque, nervous manner now in fash- 
ion. Among the treasures of Mr. Mitchell's cor- 
respondence, none, I will venture to say, are 
more highly valued by him than the letters from 
Washington Irving, although the collection con- 
tains epistles from Hawthorne, Holmes, Dickens, 
Greeley, and many other distinguished men. 
Other interesting memorabilia are the roughly 
drawn plans of Bayard Taylor's house and grounds 
at " Kennett," which the projector sketched for 
his host during his last visit at Edgewood. 

In appearance Mr. Mitchell is rather under 
than over the average height, broad-shouldered 
and squarely shaped, the complexion fresh and 
ruddy, the nose slightly aquiline, the lips firmly 
shut, the glance of the eye kindly but keen. 
The engraving in The Eclectic Magazine for 
September, 1867, still gives an excellent idea of 
its subject, though the dark, luxuriant whiskers 



DONALD G. MITCHELL {IK MARVEL). 251 

there pictured are now a decided gray. It may 
not be generally know that, besides German 
translations of several of Mr. Mitchell's books, 
his " Reveries " and '' Dream Life " have been 
reprinted in Germany in Diirr's Collection of 
Standard American Authors. 

Henry A. Beers. 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 



253 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 

IN JAMAICA PLAIN AND IN BOSTON 

The surroundings and experiences of Fran- 
cis Parkman were, in some respects, very happily 
in accord with his aims and achievements, 
and in other respects as unfortunate as one 
could imagine. His home in childhood was 
near the forest of the Middlesex Fells, Massa- 
chusetts ; and his wanderings and shootings in 
those woods early developed the two leading 
interests of his youth — the woods and the Indian. 
When his literary taste and ambition were 
aroused, in Harvard, he chose as his topic the 
French and Indian or Seven Years' War, because 
it dealt with these favorite subjects, and, more- 
over, appealed to his strong sense of the pictur- 
esque. The die was thus cast ; and thereafter, 
through college, through the law school, indeed 
through life, it molded his existence. For some 
years his reading, study, and vacation journeys 
all had a bearing on that particular subject. On 
leaving college he was troubled with an abnormal 
sensibility of the retina, which restricted the use 
of his eyes within very narrow limits. As it was 

255 



256 FRANCIS PARKMAN. 

apparent, therefore, that he could not then col- 
lect the vast body of materials required for the 
history of that war, he concluded to take up, as 
a preparatory work in the same direction, the 
conspiracy of Pontiac. In accordance with his 
plan pursued in studying all of his topics, he vis- 
ited the localities concerned, and, where it was 
possible, saw the descendants of the people to be 
described. Not content with seeing the semi- 
civilized Indians, he went to the Rocky Moun- 
tains, in 1846, lived a while with the Ogallalla 
Sioux, visited some other tribes, and studied the 
character, manners, customs and traditions of the 
wildest of the Indians. But he bought this in- 
valuable experience at a dear price ; for while 
with these tribes on the hunt and the war-path 
he was attacked by an acute disorder, and being 
unable to rest and cure himself, his constitution 
was nearly ruined as well as his eyesight. How- 
ever, he returned safe if not sound from his per- 
ilous journey, and wrote " The Oregon Trail " 
(1847) and " The Conspiracy of Pontiac" (185 1) 
by the help of readers and an amanuensis. He 
had now to settle himself in the prospect of years 
of ill-health and perhaps blindness. 

In 1854 he bought a property on the edge of Ja- 
maica Pond, and established himself and his family 
there in the woods and on the shore of a beautiful 
sheet of water — surroundings congenial to his fan- 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. ^57 

cy and his restrained ambition. About ten years 
of his life, in periods of two or three years, passed 
as a blank in literary labor; and during the re- 
mainder of the time, frequent and long interrup- 
tions broke the line of his efforts. Such an expe- 
rience at the opening of his career would have been 
unendurable without some absorbing pursuit; and 
having a favorable site for gardening and an un- 
failing love of nature, he took up the study of hor- 
ticulture. By 1859 it had become his chief occu- 
pation — one that filled happily several years, and 
to the last occupied more or less time according to 
the amount of literary work he could do. His la- 
bors were made fruitful to the public in a profes- 
sorship at the Bussey Institution, the publication 
of "The Book of Roses" in 1866, the presidency 
of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and in 
careful experiments extending over ten or twelve 
years in the hybridization of lilies and other flow- 
ers. Among the most noted of his floral creations 
is the magnificent liliiim Parkmaufiiy named by 
the English horticulturist who purchased the 
stock. Mr. Parkman's summer home, at the 
Pond, was a plain but sunny and cheerful house, 
in the midst of a garden sloping down to the 
water; his study window looked to the north, the 
light least trying to sensitive eyes. The charm- 
ing site, the landscapes about, the greenhouse and 
grounds in summer full of rare flowers, were the 



258 FRANCIS PARKMAiSr. 

chief interests of the place ; for his library and 
principal workshop were in Boston. As much ex- 
ercise was necessary to him, he was a familiar figure 
in this pretty suburb of the city, either riding on 
horseback, rowing on the pond, or walking in the 
fields and woods. 

But in the midst of all these discouraging 
delays and extraneous occupations, his literary 
aims were not forgotten ; he pushed on, when 
he could, his investigations and composition by 
the help of readers and an amanuensis. Those 
who are unacquainted with the labor of historic 
research can scarcely imagine the difificulty, ex- 
tent, and tedium of his investigations. The reader 
can glance over a book and pick out the needle 
he seeks in the haystack ; but he who uses 
another's eyes must examine carefully the entire 
stack in order not to miss a possible needle. Mr. 
Parkman's ground has been won inch by inch. 
On finishing " The Conspiracy of Pontiac," he 
had extended his first plan of writing the Sev- 
en Years* War, and determined to take up the 
entire subject of French colonization in North 
America ; and instead of making a continuous 
history, to write a series of connected narratives. 
He therefore continued, and extended, his journeys 
for investigation, in this country, in Canada, and 
in Europe ; and by the help of readers and copy- 
ists he selected and acquired the necessary docu- 



FRANCIS PARKMAlSr. 259 

ments. But even with all the aid possible, the 
preparation of the first volume of the series con- 
sumed fourteen years. " The Pioneers of France 
in the New World " appeared in 1865, "The Jesu- 
its in North America" in 186/; "La Salle and 
the Discovery of the Great West" in 1869, "The 
Old Regime in Canada" in 1874, " Frontenac and 
New France under Louis XIV." in 1877, "Mont- 
calm and Wolfe" in 1884. 

Mr. Parkman's winter home, where he did the 
most of his work, was in the house of his sister, 
Miss Parkman, at 50 Chestnut Street, Boston — 
a quiet locality on the western slope of Beacon 
Hill. His study was a plain, comfortable, front 
room at the top of the house, with an open fire, a 
small writing-table beside the window, and shelves 
of books covering the walls. The most valuable 
of his treasures were manuscript copies of both 
public and private documents. For the sake of 
greater safety and more general usefulness ho 
parted with some of these manuscripts — gave 
a lot of facsimile maps to Harvard College, and a 
collection of thirty-five large volumes to the Mas- 
sachusetts Historical Society. The latter embrace 
eight volumes of documents from the Archives of 
Marine and Colonies and other archives of France, 
relating to Canada, from 1670 to 1700; twelve 
volumes from the same sources, from 1748 to 
1763; four volumes from the Public Record 



26o FRANCIS PARK MAN. 

Office of London, from 1750 to 1760; one vol- 
ume from the National Archives of Paris, from 
1759 to 1766; one volume from the British Mu- 
seum, from 175 1 to 1761 ; one volume of diverse 
letters to Bourlamaque by various officers in Can- 
ada during the war of 1755-63 ; one volume of 
letters to the same by Montcalm while in Canada 
(Montcalm had requested Bourlamaque to burn 
them, but Mr. Parkman, fifteen years before he 
could find them, believed in their existence, and 
finally discovered them in a private collection of 
manuscripts) ; one volume of Montcalm's private 
letters to his wife and his mother, written while he 
was in America — obtained from the present Mar- 
quis de Montcalm ; and one volume of Washing- 
ton's letters to Colonel Bouquet, from the British 
Museum. The most recent publication, ** Mont- 
calm and Wolfe," takes in twenty-six of these 
volumes, besides a large lot of printed matter and 
notes made at the sources of information. The 
above collection constitutes about half of Mr. 
Parkman's manuscripts. A considerable part 
of them cannot be estimated by pages and 
volumes, being unbound notes and references 
representing a vast amount of research. Two 
sets of copyists sent him from France and Eng- 
land copies of the papers he designated. 

Mr. Parkman's experience offers a valuable and 
encouraging example in the history of literature. 



FRANCIS PARK MAN. 261 

On the one side he had poor health and poor 
sight for a vast amount of labor ; on the other he 
had money, time, capacity, a tough, sinewy, phy- 
sique, a resistant, calm, cheerful temper, and an 
indomitable perseverance and ambition. As in 
some other cases, his disabilities seem to have 
been negative advantages, if we may judge by his 
productions ; for his frequent illnesses, by retard- 
ing his labors, increased his years and experience 
before production, and forced the growth of de- 
partments of knowledge generally neglected by 
students. He was led to give equal attention 
to observing nature, studying men, and digesting 
evidence. His studies and manual labors in horti- 
culture and his practical familiarity with forest 
life and frontier life quickened his sympathy 
with nature. His extensive travels gave him a 
wide knowledge of life, manners, and customs, 
from the wigwam to the palace. Far from being 
a recluse, he was, until his death in 1893, a man of 
the world, often locked out of his closet and led 
into practical and public interests (for six years he 
was President of the St. Botolph Club of Boston, 
and for ten years one of the seven members of 
the Corporation of Harvard University). He 
was naturally a student of men, and a keen ob- 
server of character and motives. His discourag- 
ing interruptions from literary work, while not 
often stopping the above studies, forced upon him 



262 FRANCIS PARKMAN. 

time for reflection, for weighing the evidence he 
collected, and for perfecting the form of his 
works. Doubtless human achievements do pro- 
ceed from sources more interior than exterior; but 
the circumstances of Mr. Parkman's life must have 
conduced to the realism, strength, and pictur- 
esqueness of his descriptions ; to the distinctness 
of his characters, their motives and actions ; to 
the thoroughness of his investigations ; and to 
the impartiality of judgment and the truth of 
perspective in his histories. 

C. H. Farnham. 



GOLDWIN SMITH 



263 



GOLDWIN SMITH 

AT " THE GRANGE " 

Beverly Street, though it lies in the heart of 
the city, is one of the most fashionable quarters 
of Toronto. About the middle of its eastern 
side a whole block is walled off from curious eyes 
by a high, blank fence, behind which rises what 
seems a bit of primeval forest. The trees are 
chiefly fir-trees, mossed with age, and sombre ; 
and in the midst of their effectual privacy, with 
sunny tennis-lawns spread out before its windows, 
is The Grange. The entrance to the grounds is 
in another street. Grange Road, where the fir- 
trees stand wide apart, and the lawns stretch 
down to the great gates standing always hospit- 
ably open. The house itself is an old-fashioned, 
wide-winged mansion of red brick, low, and 
ample in the eaves, its warm color toned down 
by the frosts of many Canadian winters to an 
exquisite harmony with the varying greens 
which surround it. The quaint, undemonstrative 
doorway, the heavy, dark-painted hall-door, the 
shining, massy knocker, and the prim side- 
windows, — all savor delightfully of United 

265 



266 GOLD WIN SMITH. 

Empire Loyalist days. Just such fit and satis- 
factory architecture this as we have fair chance 
of finding wherever the makers of Canada came 
to a rest from their flight out of the angry, new- 
born republic. As the door opens one enters a 
dim, roomy hall, full of soft brown tints and 
suggestion of quiet, the polished floor made 
noiseless with Persian rugs. On the right hand 
open the parlors, terminated by an octagonal 
conservatory. The wing opposite is occupied by 
the dining-room and a spacious library. 

The dining-room has a general tone of crimson 
and brown, and its walls are covered with portraits 
in oil of the heroes of the Commonwealth. Mil- 
ton, Cromwell, Hampden, Pym, Vane, et al. — they 
are all there, gazing down severely upon the well- 
covered board. The abstemious host serenely 
dines beneath that Puritan scrutiny ; but to me 
it has always seemed that a collection of the 
great cavaliers would look on with a sympathy 
more exhilarating. From here a short passage 
leads to the ante-room of the library, which, like 
the library itself, is lined to the ceiling with 
books. At the further end of the library is the 
fireplace, under a heavy mantel of oak, and near 
it stands a massive writing-desk, of some light 
colored wood. A smaller desk, close by, is de- 
voted to the use of the gentleman who acts as 
librarian and secretary. The ample windows are 



GOLD WIN SMITH, 267 

all on one side, facing the lawn ; and the centre 
of the room is held by a billiard-table, which, for 
the most part, is piled with the latest reviews and 
periodicals. The master of The Grange is by no 
means an assiduous player, though he handles 
the cue with fair skill. In such a home as this, 
Mr. Goldwin Smith may be considered to have 
struck deep root into Canadian soil ; and as his 
wife, whose bright hospitality gives The Grange 
its highest charm, is a Canadian woman, he has 
every right to regard himself as identified with 
Canada. In person, Mr. Smith is very tall, 
straight, spare ; his face keen, grave, almost 
severe ; his iron-gray hair cut close ; his eyes 
restless, alert, piercing, but capable at times of 
an unexpected gentleness and sweetness ; his 
smile so agreeable that one must the more lament 
its rarity. The countenance and manner are 
preeminently those of the critic, the investiga- 
tor, the tester. As he concerns himself earnestly 
in all our most important public affairs, his 
general appearance, through the medium of the 
Toronto Grip, our Canadian Punch, has come to 
be by no means unfamiliar to the people of 
Canada. 

In becoming a Canadian, Goldwin Smith has 
not ceased to be an Englishman ; he has also 
desired to become an American, by the way. 
He holds his English audience through the pages 



268 GOLD WIN SMITH. 

of TJic Contemporary and The Nineteenth Century, 
and he addresses Americans for some weeks 
every year from a chair in Cornell University. In 
Canada he chooses to speak from behind an 
extremely diaphanous veil — the nom de plume of 
" A Bystander "; and under this name he for 
some time issued a small monthly (changed to a 
quarterly before its discontinuance), which was 
written entirely by himself, and treated of cur- 
rent events and the thought of the hour. That 
periodical has now been succeeded by The Week, 
to which the Bystander has been a contribu- 
tor since the paper was founded. It were out 
of place to speak here of Goldwin Smith's career 
and work in England ; it would be telling, too, 
what is pretty widely known. In Canada his 
influence has been far deeper than is generally 
imagined, or than, to a surface-glance, would 
appear. On his first coming here he was unfair- 
ly and relentlessly attacked by what was at the 
time the most powerful journal in Canada, the 
Toronto Globe ; and he has not lacked sharp but 
irregular antagonism ever since. Somewhat 
relentless himself, as evinced by his attitude 
toward the Irish and the Jews, and having always 
one organ or another in his control, he has long 
ago wiped out his score against the Globe, and 
inspired a good many of his adversaries with dis- 
cretion. He devotes all his energy and time, at 



GOLD WIN SMITH. 269 

least so far as the world knows, to work of a 
more or less ephemeral nature ; and when urged 
to the creation of something permanent, some- 
thing commensurate with his genius, he is wont 
to reply that he regards himself rather as a jour- 
nalist than an author. He would live not by 
books, but by his mark stamped on men's minds. 
It does, indeed, at first sight, surprise one to 
observe the meagreness of his enduring literary^ 
work, as compared with his vast reputation. 
There is little bearing his name save the vol- 
ume of collected lectures and essays — chief 
among them the perhaps matchless historical 
study entitled " The Great Duel of the Seven- 
teenth Centur}^" — and the keen but cold mono- 
graph on Cowper contributed to the English 
Men-of-Letters. His visible achievement is soon 
measured, but it would be hard to measure the 
wide-reaching effects of his influence. Now, 
while a sort of conservatism is creeping over his 
utterances with years, doctrines contrary to those 
he used so strenuously to urge seem much in the 
ascendant in England. But in Canada he has 
found a more plastic material into which, almost 
without either our knowledge or consent, his lines 
have sunk deeper. His direct teachings, perhaps, 
have not greatly prevailed with us. He has not 
called into being anything like a Bystander party, 
Xor instance, to wage war against party govern- 



270 GOLD WIN SMITH. 

ment, and other great or little objects of his 
attack. For this his genius is not synthetic 
enough — it is too disintegrating. But his in- 
fluence pervades all parties, and has proved a 
mighty shatterer of fetters amongst us — a swift 
solvent of many cast-iron prejudices. He has 
opened, liberalized, to some extent deprovin- 
cialized, our thought, and has convinced us that 
some of our most revered fetishes were but 
feathers and a rattle after all. But he sees too 
many sides of a question to give unmixed satis- 
faction to anybody. The Canadian Nationalists, 
with whom he is believed to be in sympathy, owe 
him both gratitude and a grudge. He has made 
plain to us our right to our doctrines, and the 
Tightness of our doctrines ; he has made ridicu- 
lous those who would cry "Treason" after us. 
But we could wish that he would suffer us to 
indulge a little youthful enthusiasm, as would 
become a people unquestionably young; and also 
that he would refrain from showing us quite so 
vividly and persistently all the lions in our path. 
We think we can deal with each as it comes 
against us. His words go far to weaken our faith 
in the ultimate consolidation of Canada ; he 
tends to retard our perfect fusion, and is inclined 
to unduly exalt Ontario at the expense of her 
sister Provinces. All these things trouble us, as 
increasing the possibility of success for a move- 



GOLD WIN SMITH. 271 

merit just now being actively stirred in England, 
and toward which Goldwin Smith's attitude has 
ever been one of uncompromising antagonism — 
that is, the movement toward imperial federa- 
tion. 

Speaking of Mr. Smith and Canadian National- 
ism, as the Nationalist movement is now too big 
to fear laughter, I may mention the sad fate of 
the first efforts to institute such a movement. 
A number of years ago, certain able and patriotic 
young men in Toronto established a '' Canada 
First " party, and threw themselves with zeal into 
the work of propagandizing. Mr. Smith's co- 
operation was joyfully accepted, and he joined 
the movement. But it soon transpired that it 
was the movement which had joined him. In 
very fact, he swallowed the " Canada First " 
party; and growing tired of propagandizing when 
he thought the time was not ripe for it, and find- 
ing something else to do just then than assist at 
the possibly premature birth of a nation, he let 
the busy little movement fall to pieces. The vital 
germ, however, existed in every one of the sep- 
arate pieces, and has sprung up from border to 
border of the land, till now it has a thousand 
centers, is clothed in a thousand shapes, and is 
altogether incapable of being swallowed. 

As I am writing for an American audience, it 
may not be irrelevant to say, before concluding. 



272 GOLD WIN SMITH. 

that while Goldwin Smith is an ardent believer in, 
and friend of, the American people, he has at the 
same time but a tepid esteem for the chief part 
of American literature. He rather decries all 
but the great humorists, for whom, indeed, his 
admiration is unbounded. He has a full and 
generous appreciation for the genius of Poe. 
But he misses entirely the greatness of Emerson, 
allows to Lowell no eminence save as a satirist, 
and is continually asking, privately, that America 
shall produce a book. As he has not, however, 
made this exorbitant demand as yet in printer's 
ink, and over his sign and seal, perhaps we may 
be permitted to regard it as no more than a mild 
British joke. 

Charles G. D. Roberts. 
Fredericton, N. B. 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 



273 



EDMUND C. STEDMAN 

IN NEW YORK AND AT " KELP ROCK " 

New York is an ugly city, with only here and 
there a picturesque feature. Still the picturesque 
exists, if it be sought for in remote corners. 
When about to choose a permanent home, Mr. 
Stedman did not exile himself to the distance 
at which alone such advantages are to be ob- 
tained. For he may be said to be the typical 
literary man of his day, in that he is the man 
of his epoch, of his moment — of the very latest 
moment. There is that in his personality which 
gives him the air of constantly pressing the elec- 
tric button which puts him in relation with the 
civilized activities of the world. He was born 
man of the world as well as poet, with a sensitive 
response to his age and surroundings which has 
enabled him to touch the life of the day at many 
divergent points of contact. He owes to an 
equally rare endowment, to his talent for leading 
two entirely separate lives, his success in main- 
taining his social life free from the influences of 
his career as an active business man. The broker 

275 



276 EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 

is a separate and distinct person from the writer 
and poet. The two, it is true, meet as one, on 
friendly terms, on the street or at the club. But 
the man of Wall Street is entertained with scant 
courtesy within the four walls of the poet's house. 

Once within these, Mr. Stedman's true life 
begins. It is an ardent, productive, intellectual 
life, only to be intruded upon with impunity by 
the insistent demands of his social instincts. Mr. 
Stedman has the genius of good-fellowship. His 
delight in men is only second to his delight in 
books. How he has found time for the dispens- 
ing of his numerous duties as host and friend is 
a matter of calculation which makes the arithme- 
tic of other people's lives seem curiously at fault. 
He has always possessed this talent for forcing 
time to give him twice its measure. That ex- 
pensive mode of illumination known as burning 
the candle at both ends would probably be found 
to be the true explanation. 

I have said that Mr. Stedman's town house 
could not be characterized as rich in picturesque 
external adjuncts. The street in which it is situ- 
ated — West Fifty-fourth — is of a piece with the 
prevailing character of New York domestic archi- 
tecture. It is a long stretch of brown-stone 
houses, ranged in line, like a regiment of soldiers- 
turned into stone. But the impassive chocolate 



EDMUND C. S TED MAN. 277 

features, like some mask worn by a fairy princess, 
conceal a most enchanting interior. Once within 
the front door, the charm of a surprise awaits one. 
Color, warmth, and grace greet the eye at the out- 
set. If it be the poet's gift to turn the prose of 
life into poetry, it is certain that the same magical 
art has here been employed to make house- 
hold surroundings minister to the aesthetic sense. 
There is a pervading harmony of tone and tints 
throughout the house, the rich draperies, the soft- 
toned carpets, and the dusk of the tempered day- 
light, are skillfully used as an effective background 
to bring into relief the pictures, the works of art, 
and the rare bits of bric-a-brac. One is made 
sensible, by means of a number of clever devices, 
that in this home the arts and not the upholstery 
are called upon to do the honors. These admir- 
able results are due almost entirely to the taste 
and skill of Mrs. Stedman, who possesses an 
artist's instinct for grouping and effect. She has 
also the keen scent and the patience of the ardent 
collector. A tour of the house is a passing in 
review of her triumphs, of trophies won at sales, 
bits picked up in foreign travel, a purchase now 
and then of some choice collection, either of glass 
or china, or prints and etchings. Among the pur- 
chases has been that of a large and beautiful col- 
lection of Venetian glass, whose delicate grace and 



278 EDMUND C, STEDMAN. 

iridescent glow make the lower rooms a little 
museum for the connoisseur. But more beautiful 
even than the glass is the gleam of color from the 
admirable pictures which adorn the walls. Mr. 
Stedman is evidently a believer in the doctrine 
that there is health in the rivalry of the arts. His 
pictures look out from their frames at his books, 
as if to bid them defiance. The former are of an 
order of excellence to make even a literary critic 
speak well of them ; for Mr. Stedman has a pas- 
sion for pictures which he has taken the pains to 
train into a taste. He was a familiar figure, a 
few years ago, at the Academy of Design re- 
ceptions on press-night. He was certain to be 
found opposite one of the best water-colors or oil- 
paintings of the Exhibition, into the frame of 
which, a few minutes later, his card would be 
slipped, on which the magic word " Sold " was to 
be read. It was in this way that some charming 
creations of Wyant, of Church, and other of our 
best artists, were purchased. Perhaps the pearl 
of his collection is Winslow Homer's " Voice from 
the Cliffs," the strongest figure-picture this artist 
has yet produced. The walls divide their spaces 
between such works of art and a numerous and 
interesting collection of gifts and souvenirs from 
the poet's artist and literary friends. Among 
these is a sketch in oil of Miss Fletcher, the author 
of " Kismet," by her stepfather, Eugene Benson ; 



EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 279 

a bronze bas-relief of Bayard Taylor, who was an 
intimate friend of Mr. Stedman's ; and a com- 
panion relief of the latter poet, hanging side by 
side with that of his friend as if lovingly to empha- 
size their companionship. 

The usual parallelogram of the New York parlor 
is broken, by the pleasantly irregular shape of the 
rooms, into a series of unexpected openings, turn- 
ings and corners. At the most distant end, beyond 
the square drawing-room, the perspective is de- 
fined by the rich tones of a long stretch of stained 
glass. The figures are neither those of nymph 
nor satyr, nor yet of the aesthetic young damsel 
in amber garments whom Burne-Jonesand William 
Morris would have us accept as the successor of 
these. Here sit two strangely familiar-looking 
stolid Dutchmen in colonial dress, puffing their 
pipes in an old-time kitchen. They are Peter 
Stuyvesant and Govert Loockermans, in the act 
of being waited upon by " goede-vrouw Maria, . . . 
bustling at her best to spread the New Year's 
table." Lest the gazer might be in need of an 
introduction to these three jovial creations of the 
poet's fancy, there are lines of the poem inter- 
twined with the holly which serves as a decorative 
adjunct. No more fitting entrance could have 
been chosen to the Stedman dining-room than 
this. If there was no other company, there was 
always the extra plate and an empty chair await- 



iSo EDMUND C. STEDMAN, 

ing the coming guest. It has pleased the humor 
of Boston to lance its arrows of wit at New York 
for the latter's pretensions to establishing literary 
circles and coteries. When literary Boston was 
invited to the Stedmans to dinner, these satiri- 
cal arrows seemed suddenly to lose their edge. 
During the four or five years that Mr. and Mrs. 
Stedman occupied their charming house, New 
York had as distinctly a literary center as either 
Paris or London. On Sunday evenings, the 
evenings at home, there was such a varied as- 
semblage of guests as only a metropolis can bring 
together. Not only authors and artists, critics and 
professional men, but fashion and society, found 
their way there. At the weekly dinners were to 
be met the distinguished foreigner, the latest suc- 
cessful novelist or young poet, and the wittiest 
and the most beautiful women. As if in humor- 
ous mockery of the difficulties attendant upon 
literary success and recognition, the dining-room 
in its size and seating capacity might not inaptly 
be likened to that Oriental figure of speech by 
which the rich found heaven so impossible of 
access. The smallness of the room only served, 
however, like certain chemical apparatus, to con- 
dense and liberate the brilliant conversational 
gases. If the poet were in his most gracious 
mood, the more favored guests, after dinner, might 
be allowed a glimpse of the library. Books were 



EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 281 

scattered so profusely over the house, that each 
room might easily have been mistaken for one. 
But in a large square room at the top of the house 
is the library proper — workshop and study to- 
gether. This building his poet's nest under the 
eaves of his own cornice is the one evidence of 
the recluse in Stedman's character. When he is 
about to pluck his own plumage that his fledglings 
may be covered, he turns his back on the world. 
All the paraphernalia of his toil are about him. 
The evidences of the range and the extent of his 
reading and scholarship are to be found in taking 
down some of the volumes on the shelves. Here 
are the Greek classics, in the original, with loose 
sheets among the pages, where are translations 
of Theocritus or Bion, done into finished English 
verse. Mr. Stedman's proficiency in Doric Greek 
is matched by his familiarity with the modern 
French classics, whose lightness of touch and airy 
grace he has caught in '* Aucassin and Nicolette," 
<' Toujours Amour," and " Jean Prouvaire's Song." 
With a delicate sense of fitness, the dainty verse 
of Copp^e, B^ranger, Theodore de Banville, the 
sonnets of Victor Hugo, and, indeed, his whole 
collection of the French poets, is bound in ex- 
quisite vellum or morocco. Among these volumes 
the poet's own works appear in several rare and 
beautiful editions. There are the " Songs and 
Ballads," issued by the Bookfellows Club, the 



282 EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 

essay on Edgar Allan Poe in vellum (the first so 
bound in America), and other beautifully illus- 
trated and printed copies of his poems. The 
shelves and tables are laden with a wealth of 
literary treasure. But there is one volume one 
holds with a truly reverent delight. It is Mrs. 
Browning's own copy of '' Casa Guidi Windows," 
with interlineations and corrections. It was the 
gift of the poetess to Mrs. Kinney, Stedman's 
mother, who was among Mrs. Browning's intimate 
friends. *' How John Brown took Harper's 
Ferry," it is pleasant to learn, was an especial 
favorite with the great songstress. 

Since the reversal of fortune which overwhelmed 
Mr. Stedman five years ago, this charming home 
has been temporarily leased. The family, how- 
ever, were altogether fortunate in securing Bayard 
Taylor's old home in East Thirtieth Street, during 
an absence in Europe of the latter's wife and 
daughter. Here the conditions surrounding 
Stedman's home life have been necessarily 
changed. The arduous literary labor attendant 
on the publishingof his recently completed volume 
on the " Poets of America," which completes the 
series of contemporaneous English and American 
poets, together with his work on the " Library of 
American Literature " (of which he and Miss 
Hutchinson are the joint editors), the writing of 
magazine articles, poems and critiques, and the 



EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 283 

increased cares of his business struggles, make 
him too hard-worked a man to be available for the 
lighter social pleasures. The Sunday evenings 
are, however, still maintained, as his one leisure 
hour, and the hospitality is as generous as the 
present modest resources of the household will 
permit. Mr. Stedman's early career, and the 
native toughness of fibre which has enabled him 
to fight a winning battle against tremendous odds 
during his whole life, furnished him with the for- 
titude and endurance with which he met his re- 
cent calamity. The heroic element is a dominant 
note in his character. At the very outset of his 
career he gave proof of the stuff that was in him. 
Entering Yale College in 1849, ^"^ suspended in 
'53 for certain boyish irregularities, the man in 
him was born in a day. At nineteen he went 
into journalism, married at twenty, and in another 
year was an editor and a father. Ten years later, 
after service in all the grades of newspaper life, 
the same energy of decision marked his next de- 
parture. He gave up journalism, and went into 
active business in Wall Street that he might have 
time for more independent, imaginative writing. 
The bread-winning was so successful that in an- 
other ten years he had gained a competence, and 
was about to retire from business, to devote him- 
self entirely to literary pursuits. He now returns 
to the struggle with fortune with the old unworn. 



284 EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 

undaunted patience. He has been sustained in 
the vicissitudes of his career by the cheering com- 
panionship of his wife. Ever in sympathy with 
her husband's work and ambitions, Mrs. Stedman 
has possessed the gift of adaptability which has 
enabled her to meet with befitting ease and dig- 
nity the varying fortunes which have befallen 
them. In the earlier nomadic days she was the 
Blanche, who, with the poet, rambled through 
the " faery realm " of Bohemia. The '' little King 
Arthur'' is a grown man now, his father's co- 
worker and devoted aid. The king has abdicted 
in favor of a tiny princess, who rules the house- 
hold with her baby ways. This is another Laura, 
(Etat four, who, with her mother, Mrs. Frederick 
Stedman, completes the family circle. It needs 
the reiterated calls for grandpa and grandma to 
impress one with the reality of the fact that this 
still youthful-looking couple are not masquerad- 
ing in the parts. Mr. Stedman, in spite of his 
grayish beard and mustache, is a singularly 
young-looking man for his years. He is slight, 
with slender figure and delicate features. His 
motions and gestures are full of impulse and ener- 
gy. He has the bearing of a man who has meas- 
ured his strength with the world. The delicate 
refinement and finish of his work, as well as its 
power and vigor, are foreshadowed in h.\s personnel. 
His manner is an epitome of his literary style. 



EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 285 

His face has the charm which comes from high- 
bred features molded into the highest form of 
expression — that of intellectual energy infused 
with a deep and keen sympathetic quality. 
Something of this facial charm he inherits from 
his mother, now Mrs. Kinney. As the lovely and 
brilliant wife of the Hon. William B. Kinney, 
when the latter Avas American Minister at the 
Court of Turin, this gifted lady won a European 
reputation for the sparkling radiance of her 
beauty. 

As a talker Mr. Stedman possesses the first 
and highest of qualities — that of spontaneity. 
The thought leaps at a bound into expression. 
So rapid is the flow of ideas, and so fluent its 
delivery, that one thought sometimes trips on 
the heels of the next. His talk, in its range, its 
variety, and the multiplicity of subjects touched 
upon, even more, perhaps, than his work, is an 
unconscious betrayal of his many-sided life. The 
critic, the poet, the man of business and the man 
of the world, the lover of nature, and the keen 
observer of the social machinery of life, each by 
turn takes the ascendant. The whole, woven 
together by a brilliant tissue of short, epigram- 
matic, trenchant sentences, abounding in good 
things one longs to remember and quote, forms a 
most picturesque and dazzling ensemble. Added 
to the brilliancy, there is a genial glow of humor. 



286 EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 

and such an ardor and enthusiasm in his capacity 
for admiration, as complete Mr. Stedman's equip- 
ment as a man and a conversationalist. He 
would not be a poet did he not see his fellow- 
man aureoled with a halo. His natural attitude 
toward life and men is an almost boyish belief 
and delight in their being admirable. It is only 
on discovering they are otherwise that the critic 
appears to soften the disappointment by the rigors 
of analysis. Stedman is by nature an enthusiast. 
He owes it to his training that he is a critic. As 
an enthusiast he has the fervor, the intensity, the 
exaltation, which belong to the believer and the 
lover of all things true and good and beautiful. 
He is as generous as he is ardent, and his gift of 
praising is not to be counted as among the least 
of his qualities. But the critic comes in to tem- 
per the ardor, to weigh the value, and to test the 
capacity. And thus it is found that there are 
two men in Mr. Stedman, one of whom appears 
to be perpetually in pursuit of the other, and 
never quite to overtake him. 

If poets are born and not made this side of 
heaven, so are sportsmen. In Stedman's case the 
two appeared in one, to prove the duality pos- 
sible. Summer after summer, in the hard-won 
vacations, the two have sailed the inland lakes 
and fished in the trout streams together ; the 
fisherman oblivious of all else save the move- 



EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 287 

ments of that most animate of inanimate insects — 
the angler's fly ; the poet equally absorbed in 
quite another order of motion — that of nature's 
play. The range of Mr. Stedman's acquaintance 
among backwoodsmen and seafaring men is in 
proportion to the extent of his journeyings. 
'' There are at least a hundred men with whom I 
am intimate who don't dream I have ever written 
a line," I once overheard him say in the midst 
of a story he was telling of the drolleries of some 
forest guide who was among his " intimates." 
This talent for companionship with classes of 
men removed from his own social orbit has given 
Stedman that breadth of sympathy and that sure 
vision in the fields of observation which makes 
his critical work so unusual. He knows men as 
a naturalist knows the kingdom of animal life. 
He can thus analyze and classify, not only the 
writer, but the man, for he holds the key to a 
right comprehension of character by virtue of his 
own plastic sensibility. His delight in getting 
near to men who are at polaric distances from 
him socially, makes him impatient of those whom 
so-called culture has removed to Alpine heights 
from which to view their fellow-beings. '' There's 
so and so," he once said, in speaking of a second- 
rate poet whose verses were aesthetic sighs to 
the south wind and the daffodil; "he thinks of 
nothing but rhyming love and dove. I wonder 



288 EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 

what he would make out of a man — a friend of 
mine, for instance, in the Maine woods, a 
creature as big as Hercules, with a heart to 
match his strength. I should like to see what 
he would make of him." Stedman's own person- 
ality is infused with a raciness and a warmth 
peculiar to men who have the power of freshen- 
ing their own lives by that system of wholesome 
renewal called human contact. Much of the 
secret of his social charm comes from his delight 
in, and ready companionship with, all conditions 
of men. 

In his present study in the little house in 
Thirtieth Street there are several photographs, 
scattered about the room, of a quaint and pictur- 
esque seaside house. This is the summer home 
on the island of New Castle, N. H. It has a 
tower which seems to have been built over the 
crest of the waves, and a loggia as wide and 
spacious as a Florentine palace. No one but a 
sailor or a sea-lover could have chosen such a 
spot. To Mr. Stedman, New Castle was a verita- 
ble trouvaille. It fulfilled every condition of 
pleasure and comfort requisite in a summer 
home. The sea was at his doors, and the elms 
and fields ran down to meet it. The little island, 
with its quaint old fishing village, its old colonial 
houses, its lanes and its lovely coast line, is the 
most picturesque of microcosms ever set afloat. 



EDMUND C. STEDMAN, 289 

There is no railroad nearer than three miles, and 
to reach it one crosses as many bridges as span a 
Venetian canal. Mr. Stedman himself, the poet 
John Albee, Barrett Wendell (one of Boston's 
clever young authors), Prof. Bartlett, of Harvard, 
and Jacob Wendell's family, make a charming 
and intimate little coterie. At Kelp Rock Mr. 
Stedman is only the poet, the genial host, and 
the bon camarade. Business cares and thoughts 
are relegated to the world whence they came. 
The most approachable of authors at all times, 
at New Castle, with the sea and the sunshine to 
keep his idleness in countenance, he seems fairly 
to irradiate companionship. His idleness is of an 
order to set the rest of the world a lesson in 
activity. In his play he is even more intense, if 
possible, than in his work. The play consists of 
five or six hard-writing hours in his tower during 
the morning. This is followed by an afternoon 
of sailing, or fishing, or walking, any one of 
which forms of pleasure is planned with a view 
to hard labor of some kind, some strenuous de- 
mand on the physical forces. The evening finds 
him and his family, with some of the group 
mentioned and often with stray visitors from the 
outer world, before the drift-wood fire in the 
low-raftered hall, where talk and good-cheer com- 
plete the day. 

With such abundantly vigorous energies, Mr. 



ig6 EDMUND C. STEDMAN, 

Stedman's quarter of a century of productiveness 
is only an earnest of his future work. He has 
doubly pledged himself hereafter to the perform- 
ance of strictly original creative writing. As 
critic he has completed the work which he set 
himself to do — that of rounding the circle of 
contemporaneous poetry. In giving to the world 
such masterpieces of critical writing as the 
''Victorian Poets " and '' Poets of America," he 
owes it to his own muse to prove that the critic 
leaves the poet free. 

Anna Bowman Dodd. 

[Since this sketch was written (November, 1885) 
Mr. Stedman has sold his Fifty-fourth Street 
house, leased a house in East Twenty- sixth Street, 
bought one in West Seventy-eighth Street (1890) 
and sold it in 1895, at the same time that he dis- 
posed of "Kelp Rock." His permanent home is 
now at Lawrence Park — "Casa Laura," named 
after his wife and granddaughter — although he 
spent last winter in apartments in New York. 
His most recent works are his Victorian and 
American Anthologies and " Mater Coronata," the 
poem written for the Bicentennial Celebration of 
Yale University. — Editors.] 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD 



291 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD 

IN NEW YORK 

Among those New York men-of-letters who are 
*' only that and nothing more " — who are known 
simply as writers, and not as politicians or public 
speakers, like George William Curtis in the older, 
or Theodore Roosevelt in the younger, genera- 
tion, — there is no figure more familiar than that of 
Richard Henry Stoddard. The poet's whole life 
since he was ten years old has been passed on 
Manhattan Island ; no feet, save those of some 
veteran patrolman, " have worn its stony high- 
ways " more persistently than his. The city has 
undergone many changes since the boy landed at 
the Battery one Sunday morning over half a cen- 
tury ago, and with his mother and her husband 
wandered up Broadway, but his memory keeps 
the record of them all. 

It is not only New York that has changed its 
aspect in the hurrying years ; the times have 
changed, too, and the conditions of life are not so 
hard for this adopted New Yorker as they were 
in his boyhood and early youth. Perhaps he is 

293 



294 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

not yet in a position to display the motto of the 
Stoddards, "■ Post Nubes Lux," which he once 
declared would be his when the darkness that 
beclouded his fortunes had given place to light. 
But his labors to-day, however irksome and mon- 
otonous, are not altogether uncongenial. He is 
not yet free from the necessity of doing a certain 
amount of literary hackwork (readers of The Mail 
ayid Express are selfish enough to hope he never 
will be) ; but he has sympathetic occupation and 
surroundings, leisure to write verse at other than 
the " mournful midnight hours," a sure demand 
for all he writes (a condition not last or least in 
the tale of a literary worker's temporal blessings), 
and, above all, that sense of having won a place 
in the hearts of his fellow-men which should be 
even more gratifying to a poet than the assurance 
of a niche in the Temple of Fame. Such further 
gratification as this last assurance may give, Mr. 
Stoddard certainly does not lack. 

The story of the poet's life has been told so 
often, and in volumes so readily accessible to all 
(the best account is to be found in " Poets* 
Homes," Boston, D. Lothrop Co.), that I do not 
need to rehearse it in detail. Like the lives of 
most poets, especially the poets of America, it has 
not been an eventful one, if by eventful we imply 
those marvelous achievements or startling chan- 
ges of fortune that dazzle the world. Yet what 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 295 

more marvelous than that the delicate flower of 
poetry should be planted in a soil formed by the 
fusion of such rugged elements as a New England 
sailing-master and the daughter of a " horse-swap- 
ping" deacon? Or that, once planted there, it 
should have not only survived, but grown and 
thriven amid the rigors of such an early expe- 
rience as Stoddard's? These surely are marvels, 
but marvels to which mankind was passably ac- 
customed even before Shelley told us that the 
poet teaches in song only what he has learned in 
suffering. 

Mr. Stoddard was born July 2, 1825, at Hing- 
ham, Mass., the home of his ancestors since 1638. 
The Stoddards were seafaring folk ; the poet's 
father being one of those hardy New England 
captains whose bones now whiten the mid-sea 
sands. It was a step-father that brought Richard 
and his mother to New York ; and here the boy 
had his only schooling and an unpromising prac- 
tical experience of life. The reading and writing 
of poetry kept his soul alive during these dark 
days, and his achievements did not fail of ap- 
preciation. Poe paid him the back-handed com- 
pliment of pronouncing a poem he had written 
too good to be original ; while N. P. Willis more 
directly encouraged him to write. So also did 
Park Benjamin, Lewis Gaylord Clarke, and Mrs. 
Caroline M. Kirkland. But the first friendship 



296 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

formed with a writer of his own age resulted 
from a call on Bayard Taylor — already the author 
of "Views Afoot " and one of the editors of the 
Tribune^ — who had accepted some verses of the 
poet's, and who was, later on, the means of mak- 
ing him acquainted with another young poet and 
critic — the third member of a famous literary trio. 
This was Edmund Clarence Stedman, a younger 
man than the other two by eight years or so ; 
then (in 1859) ^^^ twenty-six years old, though he 
had already made himself conspicuous by '' The 
Diamond Wedding " and " How Old Brown took 
Harper's Ferry." With Taylor Mr. Stoddard's 
intimacy continued till the death of that distin- 
guished traveler, journalist, poet, translator and 
Minister to Germany ; with Stedman his friend- 
ship is still unbroken. He has had many friends, 
and many are left to him, but none have stood 
closer than these in the little circle in which he 
is known as " Dick." 

When Mr. Stoddard met the woman he was to 
marry, he had already published, or rather printed 
(at his own expense), a volume called " Foot- 
prints." The poems were pleasantly noticed in 
two or three magazines, and one copy of them 
was sold. As there was no call for the remainder 
of the edition, it was committed to the flames. 
Encouraged by this success, the young poet saw 
no impropriety in becoming the husband of a 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 297 

young lady of Mattapoisett. Elizabeth Barstow 
was her name, and the tie that bound them was 
a common love of books. It was at twenty-five 
(some years before his first meeting with Taylor 
or Stedman) that the penniless poet and the ship- 
builder's daughter were made one by the Rev. 
Ralph Hoyt, an amiable clergyman of this city, 
*' who found it easier to marry the poet than to 
praise his verses." 

Realizing that man cannot live by poetry alone, 
particularly when he has given hostages to for- 
tune (as Bacon, not Shakspeare, puts it) he set to 
work to teach himself to write prose, "and found 
that he was either a slow teacher, or a slow 
scholar, probably both." But prose and verse 
together, though by no means lavish in their re- 
wards to-day, were still less bountiful in the early 
*50s ; and even when the slow pupil had acquired 
what the slow teacher had to impart, he was in a 
fair way to learn by experience whether or no 
*' love is enough " for husband and wife and an 
increasing family of children. Not long be- 
fore this, however, it had been Mr. Stoddard's 
good fortune to become acquainted with Haw- 
thorne, and through the romancer's friendly in- 
tervention he received from President Pierce an 
appointment in the New York Custom House. 
He was just twenty-eight years of age when he 
entered the granite temple in Wall Street, and he 



298 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

was forty-five when he regained his freedom from 
official bondage. 

It was in 1870 that Mr. Stoddard lost his posi- 
tion in the Custom House. Shortly afterwards 
he became a clerk in the New York Dock Depart- 
ment, under Gen. McClellan ; and, in 1877, Libra- 
rian of the City Library — an anomalous position, 
better suited to his tastes and capabilities in title 
than in fact, since the Library is a library only in 
name, its shelves being burdened with books that 
would have come under Lamb's most cordial ban. 
The librarianship naturally came to an end in not 
more than two years. Since then, or about that 
date, Mr. Stoddard has been the literary editor 
of The Mail and Express — a position in which he 
has found it hard to do his best work, perhaps, 
but in which he has at least given a literary tone 
to the paper not common to our dailies. He has 
also been an occasional contributor to The Critic 
since its foundation ; until recently he was a lead- 
ing review-writer for the Tribune ; and he is still 
to be found now and then in the poets' corner of 
The Independent. Of the books he has written or 
edited it is unnecessary to give the list ; it can 
be found in almost any biographical dictionary. 
The volume on which his fame will rest is his 
** Poetical Works," published by the Scribners. 
It contains some of the most beautiful lyrics and 
blank-verse ever written in America — some of the 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 299 

most beautiful written anywhere during the poet's 
life-time. His verse is copious in amount, rich 
in thought, feeling, and imagination, simple and 
sensuous in expression. The taste of readers and 
lovers of English poetry must undergo a radical 
change indeed, if such poems as the stately Hora- 
tian ode on Lincoln, the Keats and Lincoln son- 
nets, the "Hymn to the Beautiful," ''The Flight 
of Youth," "Irreparable," "Sorrow and Joy," 
** The Flower of Love Lies Bleeding," or the 
pathetic poems grouped in the collective edition 
of the poet's verses under the general title of 
" In Memoriam," are ever to be forgotten or 
misprized. In prose, too — the medium he found 
it so difficult to teach himself to use, — he has 
put forth (often anonymously) innumerable essays 
and sketches betraying a ripe knowledge of lit- 
erature and literary history together with the 
keenest critical acumen, and flashing and glow- 
ing with alternate wit and humor. Long prac- 
tice has given him the mastery of a style as 
individual as it is pleasing : once familiar with it, 
one needs no signature to tell whether he is the 
author of a given article. 

The Stoddards' home has been, for sixteen 
years, the first of a row of three-story-and-base- 
ment houses, built of brick and painted a light 
yellow, that runs eastward along the north side 
of East Fifteenth Street, from the south-east 



300 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD, 



corner of Stuyvesant Square. Like its neighbors 
it is distinguished from the conventional New 
York house by a veranda that shades the door- 
way and first-floor windows. The neighborhood 
to the east is unattractive ; to the west, delightful. 
Stuyvesant Square — "■ Squares " it should be, for 
Second Avenue, with its endless file of horse-cars, 
trucks, carriages and foot-travelers, bisects the 
stately little park — is one of the most beautiful 
as well as one of the most "aristocratic " quarters 
of the city. (Was it not from Stuyvesant Square 
that the late Richard Grant White dedicated one 
of his last books to a noble English lady ?) It is 
the quarter long known to and frequented by the 
Stuyvesants, the Rutherfords, the Fishs, the Jays. 
Senator Evarts's city home is but a block below 
the Square. The twin steeples of fashionable St. 
George's keep sleepless watch over its shaded 
walks and sparkling fountains. By the bell of the 
old church clock the poet can regulate his domestic 
time-piece ; for its sonorous hourly strokes, far- 
heard at night, are but half-muffled by the loudest 
noises of the day; or should they chance to be 
altogether hushed, the passer-by has but to raise 
his eyes to one of the huge faces to see the gilt 
hands gleaming in the sun or moonlight. St. 
George's is on the opposite side of the Square to 
Mr. Stoddard's, at the corner of Rutherford Place 
and Sixteenth Street ; and a Friends' School and 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 301 

Meeting-House fill the space between this and the 
Fifteenth Street corner. Past the latter, the poet 
— true to the kindred points of club and home — is 
a constant wayfarer. For the Century Association, 
of which he is one of the oldest members, com- 
mands his interest now as it did when housed at No. 
109 in the same street that holds the Stoddards' 
household gods. The number at which the family 
receive their friends and mail, and give daily audi- 
ence (vicariously) to the inevitable butcher and 
baker, is 329. 

It has taken us a long while to get here, but 
here we are at last ; and I, for my part, am in no 
hurry to get away again. It is just such a house 
as you would expect to find a man like Stoddard 
in : a poet's home and literary workshop. There 
is no space, and no need, for a parlor. The front 
room (to the left as you enter the house) is called 
the library. Its general air is decidedly luxurious. 
There is a profusion of easy chairs and lounges, 
and of graceful tables laden with odd and precious 
bits of bric-a-brac. There is more bric-a-brac on 
the mantel-piece. The walls are covered close 
with paintings. At the windows hang heavy cur- 
tains; and the portiere at a wide doorway at the 
back of the apartment frames a pleasant glimpse 
of the dining-room. Rugs of various dimensions 
cover the matting almost without break. The 
fireplace is flanked on each side by high book- 



302 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

cases of artistically carved dark wood, filled with 
books in handsome bindings. A full-length por- 
trait of an officer in uniform fills the space above 
the mantel-piece: it is Colonel Wilson Barstow, 
of General Dix's staff, who served at Fortress 
Monroe during the war, and died in 1868. It 
hangs where it does because the Colonel was Mrs. 
Stoddard's brother. Between the front windows 
is a plaster medallion of the master of the house, 
by his old friend Launt Thompson. (A similar 
likeness of *' Willy " Stoddard, and a plaster cast 
of his little hand, both by Mr. Thompson, are 
the only perishable mementoes his parents now 
possess — save ''a lock of curly golden hair " — to 
remind them of their first-born, dead since '61.) 
On the east wall is a canvas somewhat more 
than a foot square, giving a full-length view of 
Mr. Stoddard, standing, as he appeared to T. W. 
Wood in 1873, when the snow-white hair against 
which the laurel shows so green to-day had just 
begun to lose its glossy blackness. Alongside 
of this hangs a larger frame, showing W. T. 
Richards's conception of " The Castle in the Air " 
described in the first poem of Stoddard's that 
attracted wide attention, — 

A stately marble pile whose pillars rise 
From deep-set bases fluted to the dome. 

The spacious windows front the rising sun, 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 303 

And when its splendor smites them, many-paned, 

Tri-arched and richly-stained, 
A thousand mornings brighten there as one. 

The painting has grown mellow with the flight of a 
quarter-century. It shows the influence of Turner 
very plainly, and is accepted by the painter of the 
scene in words as a fair interpretation in color of 
the chdtcau eii Espagne of his song. It was a fa- 
vorite of Sandford Gifford's — another dear friend 
of the poet's, whose handiwork in lake and moun- 
tain scenery lights up other corners of the room. 
Kindred treasures are a masterly head, by East- 
man Johnson, of a Nantucket fisherman, gazing 
seaward through his glass ; a glimpse of the 
Alps, presented by Bicrstadt to Mrs. Stoddard ; a 
swamp-scene, by Homer Martin, in his earlier 
manner; a view of the Bay of Naples, by Charles 
Temple Dix, the General's son ; and bits of color 
by Smillie, Jarvis McEntee, S. G. W. Benjamin, 
and Miss Fidelia Bridges. Two panels (** Winter " 
and '* Summer ") were given to the owner by a 
friend who had once leased a studio to J. C. Thom, 
a pupil of Edouard Fr^re. When the artist gave 
up the room, these pictures were sawed out of 
the doors on which he had painted them. Besides 
two or three English water-colors, there are small 
copies by the late Cephas G. Thompson, whose art 
Hawthorne delighted to praise, of Simon Mem- 
mi's heads of Petrarch and Laura, at Florence. A 



304 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

more personal interest attaches to an oil-painting 
by Bayard Taylor — a peep at Buzzard's Bay from 
Mattapoisett, disclosing a part of the view visi- 
ble from Mrs. Stoddard's early home. Not all of 
these works are to be found in the library ; for in 
our hurried tour of inspection we have crossed 
the threshold of the dining-room, where such 
prosaic bits of furniture as a sideboard, dinner- 
table and straight-backed chairs hold back the 
flood of books. One wave has swept through, 
however, and is held captive in a small case 
standing near the back windows. The summer 
light that finds its way into this room is filtered 
through a mass of leaves shading a veranda sim- 
ilar to the one in front. 

The poet's " den," on the second floor, embraces 
the main room and an alcove, and is lighted 
by three windows overlooking the street. His 
writing-desk — a mahogany one, of ancient make — 
stands between two of the windows. Above it 
hangs a large engraving of Lawrence's Thackeray, 
beneath which, in the same frame, you may read 
**The Sorrows of Werther" in the balladist's own 
inimitable hand. As you sit at the desk, Mrs. 
Browning looks down upon you from a large 
photograph on the wall at your right — one which 
her husband deemed the best she ever had taken. 
A delicate engraving hangs beside it of Holmes's 
miniature of Byron — a portrait of which Byron 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 305 

himself said, " I prefer that likeness to any which 
has ever been done of me by any artist whatever." 
It shows a head almost feminine in its beauty. 
An etching of Hugo is framed above a striking 
autograph that Mr. Stoddard paid a good price 
for — at a time, as he says, when he thought he 
had some money. The sentiment is practical : 
" Donnez cent francs aux pauvres de New York. 
Donnez moins, si vous n'etes pas assez riche ; 
mais donnez. VICTOR HUGO." The manuscript, 
which looks as if it might have been written with 
a sharpened match, is undated aud unaddressed. 
Every one, therefore, is at liberty to regard it as 
a personal appeal or command to himself. Close 
beside the Byron portrait is an etching of Mr. 
Stedman ; into its frame the owner has thrust 
that gentleman's visiting card, on which, over the 
date "Feb. 14, 1885," are scribbled these lines: 

It is a Friar of whiskers gray 

That kneels before your shrine, 
And, as of old, would once more pray 

To be your Valentine. 

Among the treasures of mingled literary and 
artistic interest in this room is a small portrait of 
Smollett. It is painted on wood, and the artist's 
name is not given. Mr. Stoddard has not found 
it reproduced among the familiar likenesses of 
the novelist. Along the wall above the mantel- 
piece runs a rare print of Blake's '' Canterbury 



3o6 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

Pilgrimage," with the designation of each pilgrim 
engraved beneath his figure. It is noteworthy 
for its dissimilarity, as well as its likeness, to the 
poet-painter's more familiar works. The main 
wall in the alcove I have spoken of displays a life- 
size crayon head of Mr. Stoddard, done by Alex- 
ander Laurie in 1863. It also gives support to 
several rows of shelves, running far and rising 
high, filled chock-full of books less prettily bound 
than those in the library, but of greater value, 
perhaps, to the eyes that have so often pored upon 
them. It is the poet's collection, to which he 
has been adding ever since he was a boy, of En- 
glish poetry of all periods ; and it has been con- 
sulted to good purpose by many other scholars 
than the owner. Under an engraving of Raphael's 
portrait of himself, at the back of the larger room, 
is a case filled with books of the same class, 
but rarer still — indeed, quite priceless to their 
owner ; for they are the tomes once treasured by 
kindred spirits, and inscribed with names writ in 
that indelible water which still preserves the 
name of Keats. 

Of the books of this class, from the libraries of 
famous authors — some being presentation copies, 
and others containing either the owners' signa- 
tures or their autographic annotations of the text, 
— may be mentioned volumes that once belonged 
to Edmund Waller, Thomas Gray, Sir Joshua 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 307 

Reynolds, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles 
Lamb, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Robert 
Southey, Hartley Coleridge, Lord Byron, Thom- 
as Lisle Bowles, Felicia Hemans, Thomas Camp- 
bell, William Motherwell, and Caroline Norton. 
Among signatures or documents in the manu- 
script of famous men are the names of William 
Alexander, Earl of Sterling; Fulke Greville, 
Lord Brooke ; Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, 
author of "Gorboduc"; Samuel Garth, author of 
*' The Dispensary," and others. Among the man- 
uscripts cherished by Mr. Stoddard are letters 
or poems from the pens of William Shenstone, 
Burns, Cowper, Sheridan, Southey, Wordsworth, 
Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Moore, Campbell, 
Dickens, Thackeray, Bryant, Longfellow, Poe, 
Lowell, Bayard Taylor, Ebenezer Elliott, " the 
Corn Law Rhymer"; Walter Savage Landor, 
James Montgomery, Felicia Hemans, Thomas 
Hood, Bryan Waller Procter (*' Barry Cornwall "), 
Miss Mitford, Lord Tennyson, Swinburne, Fred- 
erick Locker-Lampson, N. P. Willis, Charles 
Brockden Brown, J. G. Whittier, Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne, Leigh Hunt, Washington Irving, Robert 
Browning, Mrs. Browning, and scores of other 
English and American poets and writers of dis- 
tinction. 

Included in this choice collection are the man- 
uscripts of Hunt's *' Abou Ben Adhem," Thack- 



3o8 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

eray's " Sorrows of Werther," Bryant's " Anti- 
quity of Freedom," Longfellow's "Arrow and 
Song " (" I shot an arrow into the air "), Mrs. 
Browning's " Castrucci Castricanni," pages of 
Bryant's translation of Homer, Tennyson's 
"Tears, Idle Tears," Lord Houghton's " I Wan- 
dered by the Brookside," Barry Cornwall's " Moth- 
er's Last Song," Sheridan's " Clio's Protest " (con- 
taining the famous lines, 

They write with ease to show their breeding, 
But easy writing's cursed hard reading), 

Poe's sonnet " To Zante," Holmes's " Last Leaf," 
Lowell's " Zekle's Courtin' " and a manuscript 
volume containing nearly all of Bayard Taylor's 
" Poems of the Orient." His library of English 
poets contains many now scarce first editions — 
Drayton's Poems, 1619; Lord Sterling's " Mon- 
archic Tragedies," 1602 ; Brooke's " Alaham Mus- 
tapha," 1631 ; Milton's Poems, 1645; the early 
editions of Suckling, etc. 

The most precious of all Mr. Stoddard's literary 
relics is a lock of light brown or golden hair — the 
veriest wisp, — ^that came to him from his friend 
and brother poet Mr. George H. Boker of Phila- 
delphia. Mr. Boker had it from Leigh Hunt's 
American editor, S. Adams Lee, to whom it was 
given by Hunt himself. It was " the distin- 
guished physician Dr. Beatty " who gave it to 



kiCHARD HENRY STODDARD. 309 

the English poet ; and it was Hoole, the trans- 
lator of Tasso, who gave it to Beatty. The next 
previous owner to Hoole was Dr. Samuel John- 
son. Further back than this, Leigh Hunt could 
not trace it ; but he believed it to be a portion 
of the lock attached to a miniature portrait of 
Milton known to have existed in the time of 
Addison and supposed to have been in his pos- 
session. That it came from the august head of 
the poet of " Paradise Lost " had never been 
doubted down to Dr. Beatty's day; so at least 
wrote Hunt, in a manuscript of which Mr. Stod- 
dard preserves a copy, in Lee's handwriting, in a 
volume of Hunt's poems edited by that gentle- 
man. There is a fine sonnet of Hunt's on these 
golden threads, written when they passed into 
his possession ; and Keats's poem, " On Seeing 
a Lock of Milton's Hair," has made the relic 
still more memorable. It is smaller now than 
it was when these great spirits were sojourning 
on earth, for Leigh Hunt gave a part of it 
to Mrs. Browning. " Reverence these hairs, O 
Americans! (as indeed you will)," he wrote, "for 
in them your great Republican harbinger on this 
side of the Atlantic appears, for the first time, 
actually and bodily present on the other side of 
it.'* A companion locket holds a wisp of silver 
hairs from the head of Washington. 

It would be a serious oversight to ignore any 



3IO RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

member of the little Stoddard household — to 
make no mention of that gifted woman who 
caught the contagion of writing from her hus- 
band, and has won not only his cordial " Well 
done," but the admiration of such authoritative 
critics as Hawthorne and Stedman, to name but 
these two ; or of that son who is now an only- 
child, and therefore trebly dear to both his 
parents. Mrs. Stoddard is known and admired 
as a poet ; the bound volumes of Harper s 
Monthly bear abundant testimony to her skill as 
a writer of short stories ; and her powers as a 
novelist are receiving fresh recognition through 
the republication, by Cassell & Co., of " Two 
Men," " The Morgesons " and " Temple House." 
The son, Lorimer, a youth of twenty-four, has 
chosen the stage as his profession, and in that 
very popular piece, *' The Henrietta," has made 
his mark in the character of the young nobleman. 
In speaking of the home of the Stoddards, some 
reference to the long-haired little terrier, QEnone, 
may be pardoned. She has been an inmate of 
the house for many years ; and she trots here and 
there about it, upstairs and down, as freely and 
with as few misadventures as if she were not 
stone-blind. 

The blindness of CEnone reminds me that her 
master (whom rheumatism once robbed of the use 
of his right hand for many years) is gradually 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 311 

losing the use of his eyes. I found hini this 
summer, on his return from a few weeks' sojourn 
in the Adirondacks, reading and writing with the 
aid of a powerful magnifying-glass. He said the 
trip had done him little good in this respect ; 
and the glare of the sunlight upon the salt water 
at Sag Harbor, whither he was about to repair 
for the rest of the season, was not likely to prove 
more beneficial. This seashore town, where his 
friend Julian Hawthorne long since established 
himself, has of late years taken Mattapoisett's 
place as the Stoddards' summer home. 

A personal description of Mr. Stoddard should 
be unnecessary. At this late day few of his 
readers can be unfamiliar with his face. It has 
been engraved more than once, and printed not 
only with his collected poems, but in magazines 
of wider circulation than the books of any living 
American poet. It is not likely to disappoint the 
admirer of his work, for it is a poet's face, as well 
as a handsome one. The clear-cut, regular feat- 
ures are almost feminine in their delicacy ; but 
in the dark eyes, now somewhat dimmed though 
full of thought and feeling, there is a look that 
counteracts any impression of effeminacy due to 
the refinement of the features, or the melodious 
softness of the voice. The hair and beard of 
snowy whiteness make a harmonious setting for 
the poet's ruddy countenance. Though slightly 



312 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

bowed, as he steps forward to meet you (with 
left hand advanced) Mr. Stoddard still impresses 
you as a man of more than middle height. His 
cordial though undemonstrative greeting puts the 
stranger at his ease at once ; for his manner is as 
gentle as his speech is frank. 

Joseph B. Gilder. 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 



3'3 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

IN HARTFORD 

Until Mrs. Stowe's health began to fail, twice a 
day regularly she walked abroad for an hour or 
more, and between times she was apt to be more 
or less out of doors. The weather had to be un- 
mistakably prohibitory to keep her housed from 
morning till night. Not infrequently her forenoon 
stroll took her to the house of her son, the Rev. 
Charles E. Stowe, two miles away, in the north 
part of the city. So long as the season admitted 
of it, she inclined to get off the pavement into the 
fields; and she was not afraid to climb over or 
under a fence. As one would infer from her writ- 
ings, she was extremely fond of wild flowers, and 
from early spring to late autumn invariably came 
in with her hands full of them. To a friend who 
met her once on one of her outings, she exhibited 
a spray of leaves, and passed on with the single 
disconsolate remark, " Not one flower can I find," 
as if she had failed of her object. As a general 
thing she preferred to be unaccompanied on her 
walks. She moved along at a good pace, but, so 
to speak, quietly, with her head bent somewhat 
forward, and at times so wrapped in thought as to 
pass without recognition people whom she knew, 

3^5 



3i6 MRS. HARRIET BEE CHER STOWE. 

even when saluted by them. Yet she would often 
pause to talk with children whom she saw at their 
sports, and amuse both herself and them with 
kindly inquiries about their affairs — the game they 
were playing or what not. One day she stopped 
a little girl of the writer's acquaintance, who was 
performing the then rather unfeminine feat of rid- 
ing a bicycle, and had her show how she managed 
the mount and the dismount, etc., while she looked 
on laughing and applauding. It was very much 
her way, in making her pedestrian rounds, to lin- 
ger and watch workingmen employed in their va- 
rious crafts, and to enter into conversation with 
them — always in a manner to give them pleasure. 
She said once : " I keep track of all the new houses 
going up in town, and I have talked with the men 
who are building most of them." A number of 
years ago her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, sent 
her a letter which he had received from a friend 
in Germany, condoling with him on the supposed 
event of her decease, a rumor of which had some- 
how got started in Europe; and this letter 
afforded her no little entertainment, especially its 
closing with the expression " Peace to her ashes. " 
"I guess," she observed with a humorous smile, 
and using her native dialect, " the gentleman would 
think my ashes pretty lively, if he was here." 
To what multitudes was her continued presence in 
the world she blessed a grateful circumstance ! 



MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 317 

Mrs. Stowe resided in Hartford after 1864, the 
family having removed thither from Andover, 
Massachusetts, upon the termination of Prof. 
Stowe's active professional career. Her attach- 
ment to the city dated back to her youth, when 
she passed some years there. It was also the 
home of several of her kindred and near friends. 
She first lived in a house built for her after her 
own design — a delightful house, therefore. But 
its location proved, by and by, for various rea- 
sons, so unsatisfactory that it was given up ; and 
after an interval, spent chiefly at her summer 
place in Florida, the house where she lived until 
her death in 1896, was purchased. It is an 
entirely modest dwelling, of the cottage style, 
and stands about a mile west of the . Capitol in 
Forest Street, facing the east. The plot which 
it occupies — only a few square rods in extent — 
is well planted with shrubbery (there is scarcely 
space for trees) and is, of course, bright with 
flowers in their season. At the rear it joins the 
grounds of Mark Twain, and is but two minutes' 
walk distant from the former home of Charles 
Dudley Warner. The interior of the house is 
plain, and of an ordinary plan. On the right, as 
you enter, the hall opens into a good-sized parlor, 
which in turn opens into another back of it. On 
the left is the dining-room. In furnishing it is 
altogether simple, as suits with its character, and 



3i8 MRS. HARRIET BEECH ER STOWE, 

With the moderate circumstances of its occupants. 
Yet it is a thoroughly attractive and charming 
home ; for it bears throughout, in every detail of 
arrangement, the signature of that refined taste 
which has the art and secret of giving an air of 
grace to whatever it touches. The pictures, 
which are obviously heart selections, are skilful- 
ly placed, and seem to extend to the caller a 
friendly greeting. Among them are a number of 
flower-pieces (chiefly wild) by Mrs. Stowe's own 
hand. 

While there are abundant indications of literary 
culture visible, there is little to denote the abode 
of one of the most famous authors of the age. 
Still, by one and another token, an observant 
stranger would soon discover whose house he was 
in, and be reminded of the world-wide distinction 
her genius won, and of that great service of 
humanity with which her name is forever iden- 
tified. He would, for instance, remark on its 
pedestal in the bow-window, a beautiful bronze 
statuette, by Cumberworth, called '' The African 
Woman of the Fountain " ; and on an easel in the 
back parlor a lovely engraving of the late Duchess 
of Sutherland and her daughter — a gift from her 
son, the present Duke of that name — subscribed : 
*' Mrs. Stowe, with the Duke of Sutherland's kind 
regards, 1869." Should he look into a low oaken 
case standing in the hall, he would find there the 



MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 3^9 

twenty-six folio volumes of the " Affectionate and 
Christian Address of Many Thousands of Women 
in Great Britain and Ireland to their Sisters of 
the United States of America," pleading the 
cause of the slave, and signed with over half a 
million names, which was delivered to Mrs Stowe 
in person, at a notable gathering at Stafford House, 
in England, in 1853; ^^^ with it similar addresses 
from the citizens of Leeds, Glasgow and Edin- 
burgh, presented at about the same time. The 
house, indeed, is a treasury of such relics, testi- 
monials of reverence and gratitude, trophies of 
renown from many lands — enough to furnish a 
museum — all of the highest historic interest and 
value ; but for the most part they are out of 
sight. Hid away in closets and seldom-opened 
book-cases is a priceless library of " Uncle Tom " 
literature, including copies of most of its thirty- 
seven translations. Somewhere is Mrs. Stowe's 
copy of the first American edition, with the first 
sheet of the original manuscript (which, however, 
was not written first) pasted on the fly-leaf, show- 
ing that three several beginnings were made be- 
fore the setting of the introductory scene was 
fixed upon. 

There are relics, also, of a more private sort. 
For example, a smooth stone of two or three 
pounds weight, and a sketch or study on it by 
Ruskin, made at a hotel on Lake Neufchatel, 



320 MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 

where he and Mrs. Stowe chanced to meet; he 
having fetched it in from the lake-shore one even- 
ing and painted it in her presence to illustrate his 
meaning in something he had said. One of her 
most prized possessions was a golden chain of ten 
links, which, on occasion of the gathering at Staf- 
ford House that has been referred to, the Duch- 
ess of Sutherland took from her own arm and 
clasped upon Mrs. Stowe's, saying: "This is the 
memorial of a chain which we trust will soon be 
broken." On several of the ten links were en- 
graved the great dates in the annals of eman- 
cipation in England ; and the hope was expressed 
that she would live to add to them other dates of 
like import in the progress of liberty this side the 
Atlantic. That was in 1853. Twelve years later 
every link had its inscription, and the record was 
complete. 

It was difficult to realize, as one was shown 
memorials of this kind, that the fragile, gentle- 
voiced little lady, who stood by explaining them, 
was herself the heroine in chief of the sublime 
conflict they recall. For a more unpretending 
person every way than she was, or one seeming to 
be more unconscious of gifts and works of genius, 
or of a great part acted in life, it is not possible to 
imagine. In her quiet home, attended by her 
daughters, surrounded by respect and affection, 
filled with the divine calm of the Christian faith, 



MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 32 1 

in perfect charity with all mankind, the most cele- 
brated of American women passed the tranquil 
evening of her days. She would often be found 
seated at the piano, her hand straying over its 
keys — that hand that was clothed with such mighty 
power, — singing softly to herself those hymns 
of Gospel hope which were dear to her heart 
through all her earthly pilgrimage, alike in cloud 
and in sunshine. During her last years she almost 
wholly laid her pen aside, her last work having 
been the preparation, with her son's assistance, of 
a brief memoir of her honored husband, who passed 
away in 1886. 

There continued to come to her in retirement, 
often from distant and exalted sources, messages 
of honor and remembrance, which she welcomed 
with equal pleasure and humility. Among them 
was a letter from Mr. Gladstone, inspired by 
his reading "The Minister's Wooing" for the 
first time, and written in the midst of his pub- 
lic cares. What satisfaction it gave her may 
be judged by an extract from it. After telling 
her that, though he had long meant to read the 
book, he had not found an opportunity to do so 
till a month or two before, he says: **It was 
only then that I acquired a personal acquaintance 
with the beautiful and noble picture of Puritan 
life which in that work you have exhibited, upon 
a pattern felicitous beyond example, so far as my 



322 MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 

knowledge goes. I really know not among four 
or five of the characters (though I suppose Mary 
ought to be preferred as nearest to the image of 
our Saviour), to which to give the crown. But 
under all circumstances and apart from the great- 
est claims, I must reserve a little corner of admi- 
ration for Cerinthy Ann." 

Joseph H. Twichell. 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 



323 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

IN HARTFORD 

Three-quarters of a mile west of the railway sta- 
tion, in an angle which Farmington Avenue makes 
with Forest Street, and where the town looks out 
into the country, lived Mr. Warner, with Harriet 
Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain for his near neigh- 
bors. The houses where they once lived are but a 
stone's throw apart. No stones were thrown be- 
tween them, however, the three authors having been 
not on stone-throwing terms, but very far otherwise. 
Mr. Warner's house is a spacious, attractive dwell- 
ing, of the colonial style. It stands, unenclosed, 
several rods back from the street, in a grove of noble 
chestnuts, having no other grounds nor needing 
any other. Close behind it, at the foot of a steep, 
bushy bank, sweeps the bend of a considerable 
stream. 

The Garden, which Mr. Warner has made so 
famous, will be looked for in vain on the premises. 
Indoors, indeed, the sage " Calvin " is found en- 
joying, on a mantel, such immortality as a bronze 
bust can confer; but nowhere the Garden. It 
pertained to another house, where Mr. Warner 

325 



326 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 

lived when " My Summer in a Garden " was 
written ; the fireside of which, also, is celebrated 
in his ** Back-log Studies," to not a few of his 
readers the most delightful of his books, — a house 
dear to the recollection of many a friend and 
guest. While it is true that Mr. Warner's experi- 
ment of horticulture was, in the time of it, some- 
thing of a reality, its main success, it may be 
owned without disparagement, was literary ; and 
with the ripening of its literary product, the im- 
pulse to it expired. 

As one would anticipate, the interior of Mr. 
Warner's house is genial and homelike. A cheer- 
ful drawing-room opens into a wide, bright music- 
room, making, with it, one shapely apartment of 
generous, hospitable proportions. The furnishing 
is simple, but in every item pleasing. The hand 
of modern decorative art is there, though under 
rational restraint. A chimney-piece of Oriental 
design rises above the fireplace of the music-room 
set with antique tiles brought by Mr. Warner 
from Damascus. Other spoils of travel are dis- 
played here and there, with pictures and engrav- 
ings of the best. In the nook of a bow-window 
is a lovely cast of the Venus of Milo, which, when 
it was made a birthday present in the family, was 
inscribed "The Venus of my-h'eye." The house 
is full of books. Every part of it is more or less 
of a library. Laden shelves flank the landings of 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 3^7 

the broad stairway, and so on all the way up to the 
work-room in the third story, where the statuette 
of Thackeray on our author's table seems to sur- 
vey with amusement the accumulated miscellane- 
ous mass of literature stacked and piled around. 
Upon any volume of this collection Mr. Warner 
could lay his hand in an instant — when he found 
where it was. This opulence of books was partly 
due to the fact that Mr. Warner was a newspaper 
editor, and in that capacity had the general issue 
of the press precipitated upon him. Not that he 
kept it all. The theological works and Biblical 
commentaries mostly went to the minister. And 
there are a score of children about, whose juven- 
ile libraries are largely made up of contributions 
from " Uncle Charley." His home was a thor- 
oughly charming one in every way, and whoever 
may have had the pleasure of an evening there 
must have come away wishing that he might write 
an article on the mistress of that house. 

Here Mr. Warner spent his forenoons and 
did his literary work. He was very industrious, 
and was an unusually rapid writer. Some of his 
most enjoyed sketches that are apt to be quoted 
as specimens of his best work, peculiarly exhibit- 
ing his delicate and amiable humor and the char- 
acteristic merits of his style, were finished at a 
sitting. In the afternoon he was " down town " 
on duty as editor-in-chief of The Hartford Courant 



328 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 

— the oldest newspaper in continuous existence in 
this country, having been founded in 1764. His 
associate editor-in-chief was Gen. Joseph R. 
Hawley, of the United States Senate. The main 
pursuit of Mr. Warner's life was journalism. 
His native turn was literary. The ink began to 
stir in his veins when he was a boy. In his youth 
he was a contributor to the old Knickerbocker and 
Putnam's Magazine. But circumstances did not 
permit him to follow his bent. After graduating 
at college, he engaged for awhile in railroad sur- 
veying in the West ; then studied, and for a short 
time practised, law ; but finally, at the call of his 
friend Hawley, came to Hartford and settled 
down to the work of an editor, devoting his 
whole strength to it, with marked success from 
the outset, and so continued for the years before, 
during and after the War, supposing that as a 
journalist he had found his place and his career. 
His editorial work, however, was such as to give 
him a distinctly literary reputation ; and a share 
of it was literary in form and motive. People 
used to preserve his Christmas stories and 
letters of travel in their scrap-books. The 
chapters of *' My Summer in a Garden " were 
originally a series of articles written for his paper, 
without a thought of further publication. It was 
in response to numerous suggestions coming to 
him from various quarters that they were made 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 



329 



into a book. The extraordinary favor with which 
the little volume was received was a surprise to 
Mr. Warner, who insisted that there was nothing 
in it better than he had been accustomed to 
write. He was much disposed to view the hit he 
had made as an accident, and to doubt if it would 
lead to anything further in the line of authorship. 
But he was mistaken. The purveyors of litera- 
ture were after him at once. That was in 1870. 
Since then his published works have grown to a 
considerable list. 

His stock of material was ample and was con- 
stantly replenished. His mind was eminently of 
the inquiring and acquisitive order. His travels 
were fruitful of large information to him. He re- 
turned from his journey to the East, which pro- 
duced "My Winter on the Nile" and "In the 
Levant," with a knowledge of Egyptian art and 
history such as few travellers gain, and with a rare 
insight into the intricate ins and outs of the East- 
ern question, past and present. Though not an 
orator, hardly a season passed that he was not in- 
vited to give an address at some college anniver- 
sary — an invitation which he several times accept- 
ed. He once also delivered, in various colleges, a 
course of lectures of great interest and value, on 
"The Relation of Literature to Life." He was 
an enthusiastic believer in the classic culture, and 
has repeatedly written and spoken in its defense. 



33© CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, 

His humor was in his grain, and was the humor of a 
man of very deep convictions and earnest charac- 
ter. Mr. Warner was highly esteemed among his 
fellow-citizens, and was often called to serve in one 
public capacity or another. He was for a number 
of years a member of the Park Commission of the 
city of Hartford; and he at one time rendered a 
report to the Connecticut Legislature, as chairman 
of a special Prison Commission appointed by the 
State. He was a communicant in the Congrega- 
tional Church, and until his death in 1900, a con- 
stant attendant on public worship. 

Mr. Warner was a good-looking man; tall, spare, 
and erect in frame, with a strong countenance in- 
dicative of thought and refinement. His head 
was capacious, his forehead high and clear, and the 
kindly eyes behind his eye-glasses were noticeably 
wide-open. He was remarked anywhere as a per- 
son of decidedly striking appearance. The years 
powdered his full beard and abundant clustering 
hair, but he walked with a quick, energetic step, 
with his head thrown back, and pushing on as if 
he were after something. In going back and forth 
daily between his house and his editorial room in 
the Courant Building, he disdained the street rail- 
way service, habitually making the trip of some- 
thing over a mile each way afoot, in all weathers. 
His pedestrian powers were first-rate, and he took 
great pleasure in exerting them. He liked to 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 331 

shoulder a knapsack and go off on a week's tramp 
through the Catskill or White Mountains, and who- 
ever went with him was sure of enough exercise. 
He was fond of exploration, and once made, in suc- 
cessive seasons, two quite extensive horseback ex- 
cursions — with Prof. T. R. Lounsbury, of the 
Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, for his com- 
panion — through the unfrequented parts of Penn- 
sylvania, Tennessee and North Carolina. Of the 
second of these excursions he prepared an account 
in a series of articles for TJie Atlantic. He had 
the keenest relish for outdoor life, especially in the 
woods. His favorite vacation resort was the Adi- 
rondack region, where, first and last, he has camped 
out a great many weeks. His delectable little book, 
" In the Wilderness," came of studies of human 
and other nature there made. He was an expert 
and patient angler, but enjoyed nothing so much 
as following all day a forest trail through some 
before-unvisited tract, halting to bivouac under the 
open sky, wherever overtaken by night. He was 
easily companionable with anybody he chanced to 
be with, and under such circumstances, while lux- 
uriating around the camp-fire, smoking his mode- 
rate pipe, would be not unlikely to keep his guide 
up half the night, drawing him out and getting at 
his views and notions on all sorts of subjects. 

Joseph H. Twichell. 



WALT WHITMAN 



333 



WALT WHITMAN 

IN CAMDEN 

It is not a little difficult to write an article 
about Walt Whitman's ho7ne, for it was once hu- 
morously said by himself that he had all his life 
possessed a home only in the sense that a ship pos- 
sesses one. Hardly, indeed, till the year 1884 
could he be called the occupant of such a definite 
place, even the kind of one I shall presently de- 
scribe. To illustrate his own half-jocular remark 
as just given, and to jot down a few facts about 
the poet in Camden in the home where he died, is 
my only purpose in this article. I have decided to 
steer clear of any criticism of " Leaves of Grass," 
and confine myself to his condition and a brief 
outline of his personal history. I should also 
like to dwell a moment on what may be called the 
peculiar outfit or schooling he chose, to fulfill his 
mission as poet, according to his own ideal. 

In the observation of the drama of human 
nature — if, indeed, "all the world's a stage" — 
Walt Whitman had rare advantages as auditor, 

335 



336 WALT WHITMAN. 

from the beginning. Several of his earlier years, 
embracing the age of fifteen to twenty-one, were 
spent in teaching country schools in Queens and 
Suffolk counties, New York, following the quaint 
old fashion of " boarding round," that is, moving 
from house to house and farm to farm, among high 
and low, living a few days alternately at each, un- 
til the quarter was up, and then commencing over 
again. His occupation, for a long period, as print- 
er, with frequent traveling, is to be remembered ; 
also as carpenter. Quite a good deal of his life 
was passed in boarding-houses and hotels. The 
three years in the Secession War of course play 
a marked part. He never made any long sea-voy- 
ages, but for years at one period (1846-60) went 
out in their boats, sometimes for a week at a 
time, with the New York Bay pilots, among whom 
he was a great favorite. In 1 848-9 his location was 
in New Orleans, with occasional sojourns in the 
other Gulf States besides Louisiana. From 1865 
to *73 he lived in Washington. Born in 1819, his 
life through childhood and as a young and middle- 
aged man — that is, up to 1862 — was mainly spent, 
with a few intervals of Western and Southern 
jaunts, on his native Long Island, mostly in 
Brooklyn. At that date, aged forty-two, he went 
down to the field of war in Virginia, and for the 
three subsequent years he was actively engaged 
as volunteer attendant and nurse on the battle- 



WALT whitman: 'SZI 

fields, to the Southern soldiers equally with the 
Northern, and among the wounded in the army 
hospitals. He was prostrated by hospital ma- 
laria and "inflammation of the veins " in 1864, 
but recovered. He worked '* on his own hook," 
had indomitable strength, health, and activity, 
was on the move night and day, not only till the 
official close of the Secession struggle, but for a 
long time afterward, for there was a vast legacy 
of suffering soldiers left when the contest was 
over. He was permanently appointed under 
President Lincoln, in 1865, to a respectable office 
in the Attorney-General's department. (This fol- 
lowed his removal from a temporary clerkship in 
the Indian Bureau of the Interior Department. 
Secretary Harlan dismissed him from that post 
specifically for being the author of " Leaves of 
Grass.") He worked on for some time in the 
Attorney-General's office, and was promoted, but 
the seeds of the hospital malaria seem never to 
have been fully eradicated. He was at last 
struck down, quite suddenly, by a severe paralytic 
shock (left hemiplegia), from which — after some 
weeks — he was slowly recovering, when he lost 
by death his mother and a sister. Soon fol- 
lowed two additional shocks of paralysis, though 
slighter than the first. Summer had now com- 
menced at Washington, and his doctor impera- 
tively ordered the sick man an entire change of 



33^ WALT WHITMAN. 

scene — the mountains or the sea- shore. Whit- 
man accordingly left Washington, destined for 
the New Jersey or Long Island coast, but at Phil- 
adelphia found himself too ill to proceed any far- 
ther. He was taken over to Camden, and lived 
there until his death in 1 892. It is from this point 
that I knew him intimately, and to my household, 
wife and family, he was an honored and most cher- 
ished guest. 

I must forbear expanding on the poet's career 
these years, only noting that during them (1880) 
occurred the final completion of " Leaves of Grass," 
the object of his life. The house in which he 
lived is a little old-fashioned frame structure, 
situated about gun-shot from the Delaware River, 
on a clean, quiet, democratic street. This 
"shanty," as he called it, was purchased by the 
poet for ^2000 — two-thirds being paid in cash. 
In it he occupied the second floor. I commenced 
by likening his home to that of a ship, and the 
comparison might go further. Though larger 
than any vessel's cabin, Walt Whitman's room, 
at 328 Mickle Street, Camden, had all the 
rudeness, simplicity, and free-and-easy character 
of the quarters of some old sailor. In the good- 
sized, three-windowed apartment, 20 by 20 feet, 
or over, there were a wood stove, a bare board 
floor of narrow planks, a comfortable bed, divers 
big and little boxes, a good gas lamp, two 



WALT WHITMAN. 339 

big tables, a few old uncushioned seats, and lots 
of pegs and hooks and shelves. Hung or tacked 
on the walls were pictures, those of his father, 
mother and sisters holding the places of honor, a 
portrait of a sweetheart of long ago, a large print 
of Osceola the Seminole chief (given to Whitman 
many years since by Catlin the artist), some rare 
old engravings by Strange, and ** Banditti Re- 
galing," by Mortimer. Heaps of books, manu- 
scripts, memoranda, scissorings, proof-sheets, 
pamphlets, newspapers, old and new magazines, 
mysterious-looking literary bundles tied up with 
stout strings, lay about the floor here and there. 
Off against a back wall loomed a mighty trunk 
having double locks and bands of iron — such a 
receptacle as comes over sea with the foreign 
emigrants, and you in New York may have seen 
hoisted by powerful tackle from the hold of some 
Hamburg ship. On the main table more books, 
some of them evidently old-timers, a Bible, 
several Shakspeares, — a nook devoted to transla- 
tions of Homer and ^schylus and the other 
Greek poets and tragedians, with Felton's and 
Symonds's books on Greece, — a collection of the 
works of Fauriel and Ellis on mediaeval poetry, — 
a well-thumbed volume (his companion, off and 
on, for fifty years) of Walter Scott's " Border 
Minstrelsy," — Tennyson, Ossian, Burns, Omar 
Khayyam, all miscellaneously together. Whit- 



340 tVALT tVHITMAAT. 

man's stalwart form itself luxuriated m a curious, 
great cane-seat chair, with posts and rungs like 
ship's spars; altogether the most imposing, heavy- 
timbered, broad-armed and broad-bottomed edi- 
fice of the kind possible. It was the Christmas 
gift of the young son and daughter of Thomas 
Donaldson, of Philadelphia, and was specially 
made for the poet. 

Let me round off with an opinion or two, the 
result of my many years' acquaintance. (If I 
slightly infringe the rule laid down at the begin- 
ning, to attempt no literary criticism, I hope the 
reader will excuse it.) Both Walt Whitman's 
book and personal character need to be studied a 
long time and in the mass, and are not to be 
gauged by custom. I never knew a man who — 
for all he took an absorbing interest in politics, 
literature, and what is called " the world " — 
seemed to be so poised on himself alone. Dr. 
Drinkard, the Washington physician who at- 
tended him in his paralysis, wrote to the Phila- 
delphia doctor into whose hands the case passed, 
saying among other things: "In his bodily 
organism, and in his constitution, tastes and 
habits, Whitman is the most natural man I have 
ever met." The primary foundation of the 
poet's character, at the same time, was certainly 
spiritual. Helen Price, who knew him for fifteen 
years, pronounces him (in Dr. Bucke's book) the 



WALT WHITMAN. 341 

most essentially religious person she ever knew. 
On this foundation was built up, layer by layer, 
the rich, diversified, concrete experience of his 
life, from its earliest years. Then his aim and 
ideal were not the technical literary ones. His 
strong individuality, wilfulness, audacity, with 
his scorn of convention and rote, unquestionably 
carried him far outside the regular metes and 
bounds. No wonder there are some who refuse 
to consider his "Leaves" as "literature." It is 
perhaps only because he was brought up a printer, 
and worked during his early years as newspaper 
and magazine writer, that he put his expression in 
typographical form, and made a regular book of it, 
with lines, leaves and binding. 

During his last years the poet, who was almost 
seventy-three years old when he died, was in a 
state of half-paralysis. He got out of doors regu- 
larly in fair weather, much enjoyed the Delaware 
River, was a great frequenter of the Camden and 
Philadelphia Ferry, and was occasionally seen 
sauntering along Chestnut or Market Streets in the 
latter city. He had a curious sort of public socia- 
bility, talking with black and white, high and low, 
male and female, old and young, of all grades. 
He gave a word or two of friendly recognition, or 
a nod or smile, to each. Yet he was by no means 
a marked talker or logician anywhere. I know an 
old book- stand man who always spoke of him as 



34* IVALT WHITMAN'. 

Socrates. But in one respect the likeness was en- 
tirely deficient. Whitman never argued, disputed, 
or held or invited a cross-questioning bout with 
any human being. 

Through his paralysis, poverty, the embezzle- 
ment of book-agents (i 874-1 876), the incredible 
slanders and misconstructions that followed him 
through life, and the quite complete failure of his 
book from a worldly and financial point of view, 
his splendid fund of personal equanimity and good 
spirits remained inexhaustible, and was to the end 
of his life amid bodily helplessness and a most 
meagre income, vigorous and radiant as ever. 

George Selwyn. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



343 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

AT AMESBURY 

Nearly all the likenesses of Mr. Whittier with 
which the present public is familiar, represent an 
aged man, albeit with a fire flashing in the eye and 
illuminating the countenance, like that fire which 
underlies the snows of Hecla. But if, after hav- 
ing passed eighty, his face was still so strong and 
radiant, in his youth it must have had a singular 
beauty, and he kept until the last that eye of the 
Black Bachelder, a glint of which was to be seen in 
the eye of Daniel Webster, and possibly, tradition 
says, in that of Hawthorne and of Gushing. At 
any rate, he showed a fair inheritance of the 
strength of will and purpose of that strange hero 
of song and romance, his Bachelder ancestor. 

But other strains, as interesting as the old 
preacher's, are to be found in Whittier's ancestry. 
One of his grandmothers was a Greenleaf, whence 
his second name, and she is said to have been 
descended from a Huguenot family of the name 
of Feuillevert, who translated their name on 
reaching our shores (as the custom still is with 

345 



346 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

many of our French and Canadian settlers,)to 
Greenleaf. The poet himself says : 

The name the Gallic exile bore, 
St. Malo, from thy ancient mart, 

Became upon our western shore 
Greenleaf, for Feuillevert. 

To the artistic imagination, that likes in every- 
thing a reason for its being, there is something 
satisfactory in the thought of Huguenot blood in 
Whittier's veins ; and one sees something more 
than coincidence in the fact that on the Green- 
leaf coat-of-arms is both a warrior's helmet and a 
dove bearing an olive-leaf in its mouth. Among 
the Greenleafs was one of Cromwell's Lieuten- 
ants ; and thus on two sides we find our martial 
poet born of people who suffered for conscience* 
sake, as he himself did for full forty years of his 
manhood. The scion of such a race — how could 
he pursue any other path than that which 
opened before him to smite Armageddon; and 
yet the grandson of Thomas Whittier, of Haver- 
hill, who refused the protection of the block- 
house, and, faithful to his tenets, had the red 
man to friend, in the days when the war-whoop 
heralded massacre to right and left — the grand- 
son of this old Quaker, we say, must have felt 
some strange stirrings of spirit against spirit, 
within him, as the man of peace contended with 
the man of war, and the man of war blew out 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 347 

strains before which the towers of slavery's dark 
fortress fell. For Whittier was not only the 
trumpeter of the Abolitionists, in those dark but 
splendid days of fighting positive and tangible 
wrong: he was the very trumpet itself, and he 
must have felt sometimes that the breath of the 
Lord blew through him. 

They are terrible days to look back upon, the 
period of that long, fierce struggle beneath a 
cloud of obloquy and outrage ; but to those who 
lived in that cloud it was lined with light, and in 
all our sorrows there was the joy of struggle and 
of brotherhood, of eloquence and poetry and 
song, and the greater joy yet of knowing that all 
the forces of the universe must be fighting on the 
side of right. 

The old homestead where Whittier was born, 
in 1807, is still standing, and although built more 
than two hundred years ago, it is in good con- 
dition. It is on a high table-land, surrounded 
by what in the late fall and winter seems a dreary 
landscape. Carlyle's Craigenputtock, the Burns 
cottage, the Whittier homestead, all have a cer- 
tain correlation, each of them the home of genius 
and of comparative poverty, and each so bleak 
and bare as to send the imagination of the dwel- 
lers out on strong wings to lovelier scenes. Lit- 
tle boxes and paper-weights are made from the 
boards of the garret-floor of the Whittier home- 



348 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

stead, as they are from the Burns belongings; 
and twigs of the overshadowing elm are varnished 
and sold for pen-holders. But the whole house 
would have to go to the lathe to meet the de- 
mand, if it were answered generally, for it is the 
old farmhouse celebrated by " Snowbound," our 
one national idyll, the perfect poem of New Eng- 
land winter life. An allusion to that strange and 
powerful character, Harriet Livermore, in this 
poem, has brought down upon the poet's head 
the wrath of one of her collateral descendants, 
who has written a book to prove that nothing 
which was said of that fantastic being in her life- 
time was true, and that so far from quarreling 
with Lady Hester Stanhope as to which of them 
was to ride beside the Lord on his reentry into 
Jerusalem, she never even saw Lady Hester. 
But why anyone, descendant or otherwise, should 
take offence at the tender feeling and beauty of 
the poet's mention of her is as much a mystery 
as her life. 

It was in the fields about this homestead that 
fame first found our poet. For there he bought, 
from the pack of a traveling peddler, the first 
copy of Burns that he had ever seen, and that 
snatched him away from hard realities into a 
land of music ; and here the mail-man brought 
him the copy of that paper containing his earli- 
est poem, one whose subject was the presence of 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER. 349 

the Deity in the still small whisper in the soul ; 
and here Garrison came with the words of praise 
and found him in the furrow, and began that 
friendship which Death alone severed, as the two 
fought shoulder to shoulder in the great fight of 
the century. 

Although he had been for some time contribu- 
ting to the press, Mr. Whittier was but twenty- 
three years old when he was thunderstruck by a 
request to take the place of Mr. George D. Pren- 
tice, in editing TJie New England Weekly Revieiv 
for a time ; of which request he has said that he 
could not have been more astonished had he 
been told he was appointed Prime Minister to the 
Khan of Tartary. In 1835 and in 1836 he was 
elected to the State Legislature of Massachusetts, 
and he was engaged, during all this period, in 
active politics in a manner that seems totally at 
variance with the possibilities of the singer of 
sweet songs as we know him to-day. He de- 
clined reelection to the Legislature, upon being 
appointed Secretary to the American Anti-Slav- 
ery Society, removing to Philadelphia, and re- 
maining there two years, at the end of which time 
the office of The Pennsylvania Freeman^ which he 
edited, was sacked and burned by a mob. 

Few men in the world had a closer acquaintance 
with this same many-headed monster than our 
gentle poet, for he has been followed by mobs. 



350 JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER. 

hustled by them, assailed by them, carrying him- 
self with defiant courage through them all ; and it 
is a tremendous range of experience that a man 
finds, as I\Ir. Whittier was able to do, between 
being assaulted by a midnight mob and being 
chosen the Presidential Elector for a sovereign 
State. 

After the suppression of his paper — this was at 
a time when the Legislature of Georgia had 
offered a reward of five thousand dollars for the 
arrest of the editor of The Liberator, — ]\Ir. Whit- 
tier sold the old Haverhill homestead and re- 
moved to Amesbur}', a lovely town, the descend- 
ant of Queen Guinevere's Almbresbury, neighbor 
of Stonehenge and old Sarum, which seems a 
proper spot for him as for a new Sir Galahad ; 
and from this time he began to send out those 
periodical volumes of verses which have won him 
the heart of the world. Here his lovely sister 
Elizabeth, herself a poet, with his mother, and 
his Aunt Mercy — the three loved of all " Snow- 
bound's" lovers, — brightened the home for years, 
one by one withdrawing from it at last for 
their long home, and leaving him alone, but for 
the subsequent sweet companionship of his 
nieces, who themselves went away in their turn 
for homes of their own. 

The poet's dwelling in Amesbury was exceed- 
ingly simple and exquisitely neat, the exterior of a 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 351 

pale cream color, with many trees and shrubs 
about it, while, within, one room opens into an- 
other till you reach the study that should be 
haunted by the echoes of all sweet sounds, for 
here have been written the most of those verses 
full of the fitful music, 

Of winds that out of dreamland blew. 
Here, in the proper season, the flames of a cheer- 
ful fire dance upon the brass andirons of the open 
hearth, in the centre of a wall lined with books ; 
water-colors by Harry Fenn and Lucy Larcom 
and Celia Thaxter, together with interesting 
prints, hang on the other walls, rivaled, it may 
be, by the window that looks down a sunny little 
orchard, and by the glass-topped door through 
which you see the green dome of Powow Hill. 
What worthies have been entertained in this en- 
ticing place I Garrison, and Phillips, and Hig- 
ginson, and Wasson, and Emerson, and Fields, 
and Bayard Taylor, and Alice and Phoebe Gary, 
and Gail Hamilton, and Anna Dickinson, are only 
a few of the names that one first remembers, to 
say nothing of countless sweet souls, unknown to 
any other roll of fame than heaven's, who have 
found the atmosphere there kindred to their own. 
The people of Amesbury, and of the adjoining 
villages and towns, felt a peculiar ownership of 
their poet; there is scarcely a legend of all the 
region round which he has not woven into his song. 



352 JOHN GREENLEAF WHJTTIER. 

and the neighborhood feel not only as if Whittier 
were their poet, but in some way the guardian 
spirit, the genius of the place Perhaps in his 
stern and sweet life he has been so, even as much 
as in his song. "There is no charge to Mr. 
Whittier," once said a shopman of whom he had 
made a small purchase ; and there is no doubt that 
the example would have been contagious if the in- 
dependent spirit of the poet would have allowed 
it. 

The Indian summer days of the poet's life were 
spent not all in the places that knew him of old. 
The greater part of the winter was passed in Bos- 
ton; a share of the summer always went to the 
White Hills, of which he was passionately fond, 
and the remainder of the time found him in the 
house of his cousins at Oak Knoll, in Danvers, 
still in his native county of Essex. This is a 
mansion, with its porches and porticoes and sur- 
rounding lawns and groves, which seems meet for 
a poet's home ; it stands in spacious and secluded 
grounds, shadowed by mighty oaks, and with that 
woodland character which birds and squirrels and 
rabbits, darting in the checkered sunshine, must 
always give. It is the home of culture and re- 
finement, too, and as full of beauty within as with- 
out. Here many of the later poems were sent 
forth, and here fledglings had the unwarrantable 
impertinence to intrude with their callow manu- 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER. 353 

scripts, and here those pests of prominence, the 
autograph seekers, sent their requests by the thou- 
sands. But in the early fall the poet stole quietly 
back to Amesbury, and there awaited Election 
Day, a day on which he religiously believed that 
no man has a right to avoid his duty, and of which 
he always thought as when he saw 

Along the street 

The shadows meet 
Of Destiny, whose hand conceals 

The moulds of fate 

That shape the State, 
And make or mar the common weal. 

What a life he had to look back upon, as he sat 
with his fame about him — what storms and what 
delights, what struggle and what victory ! With 
all the deep and wonderful humility of spirit that 
he bore before God and man, yet it is doubtful if 
he could have found one day in it that he would 
have changed, so far as his own acts were con- 
cerned. It is certain that no one else could find it. 

In appearance, Mr. Whittier was to the last as 
upright in bearing as ever ; his eye was as black 
and burned with as keen a fire as when it flashed 
over the Concord mob, and saw beauty everywhere 
as freshly as when he cried out with the " Voices 
of Freedom " and sang the " Songs of Labor " ; and 
his smile was the same smile that won the worship 
of men, and of women, too, for sixty years and 



354 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

over. Now it is with a sort of tenderness that 
people speak and think of him whose walk in life 
ended September 7, 1892. It seemed impossible 
to think that such vitality and power and spirit 
could ever cease. And indeed, it has not ceased, 
for it has been transferred into loftier regions, 
where his earthly songs are set to the music of the 
morning-stars as they sing together. 

Harriet Prescott Spofford. 



MRS. MARGARET DELAND 



3SS 



MRS. MARGARET DELAND 

MT. VERNON STREET, BOSTON, AND KENNEBUNK- 
PORT, MAINE 

Very few houses suggest in a more marked de- 
gree the tastes of those who occupy them, than the 
one in which Margaret Deland may be found dur- 
ing the winter months, and until the chilly New 
England spring deigns to set forth a tempting 
array of blossoms. At this signal, followed by a 
general exodus in favor of suburban residences, 
Mrs. Deland — being a Bostonian only by adoption, 
and therefore to be pardoned for seeking recreation 
at a greater distance from home — closes the town 
house, leaving it guarded by flowers, to re-establish 
herself and her household in an attractive cottage 
at Kennebunkport, Maine, where her summers are 
habitually passed. 

If we are to go in search of the more represen- 
tative of the two dwellings, we must turn our 
steps in the direction of Beacon Hill, for the De- 
lands yielded a number of years ago to the inde- 
finable charm of this time-honored quarter of the 
town, and have come to be considered — like 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Mrs. Henry Whitman, 

357 



358 MRS. MARGARET DELAND. 

and others — as permanent members of the little 
colony in possession. 

On turning into Mt. Vernon Street at the foot 
of the hill, a view that is essentially picturesque 
opens up, and its separate features — the steep 
road, large elm-trees, old-fashioned residences, and 
narrow sidewalks — have hardly had time to assert 
themselves, when the objective point of one's walk 
comes in sight. No. 76 is the second of two 
houses on Mt. Vernon Street that have in turn 
afforded Mr. Deland an excuse to indulge his pre- 
dilection for reconstruction, the present habitation 
being practically a larger edition of one lower 
down the street — in which " John Ward, Preach- 
er," was written. 

A glance at the fagade proves the felicity of a 
friend's description, " It is all windows and flow- 
ers." The chronicler of "Old Garden" fancies 
and none other is to be associated with the masses 
of jonquils, hyacinths, and pansies, whose notes of 
color define the unusual width of the main win- 
dows, and are equally in evidence against a back- 
ground of soft white muslin, used as drapery for 
the curious little bay window on the second story. 
A few steps lead from the narrow sidewalk to the 
front door, and a moment later the visitor finds 
himself in a drawing-room of ample dimensions, 
reached by way of a tiny vestibule, and covering 
every inch of space on the north or Mt. Vernon 



MRS. MARGARET DELAND. 359 

Street side of the house. The maid servant in at- 
tendance disappears in search of her mistress, pass- 
ing up the curved white staircase with crimson 
carpeting, placed to the left, and treated with due 
regard for decorative effect. A happy blending of 
comfort and luxury immediately makes itself felt, 
while a huge fire-place with a cord log blazing on 
its hearth easily dominates all other attractions, 
and finds its way to the heart of many an unaccli- 
mated stranger. 

Mrs. Deland lives all over her house, the differ- 
ent rooms on the first and second floors being in 
constant use, and equally familiar to her friends. 
If she has installed herself in the sunny library 
overhead, or in the salon opening off of it, you 
will as likely as not be summoned to join her in 
one or the other of these pleasant rooms, and will 
find the same simple yet luxurious appointments — 
the cheery open fires, the profusion of flowers, the 
tasteful and harmonious decorations — evenly dis- 
tributed throughout the entire house. Books are 
stored away in every conceivable receptacle, Mr. 
Deland' s taste in this matter, as indeed in most 
others, being as fully represented as that of his 
wife. One even runs across a set of book- shelves 
fitted into the wall at the head of the staircase, 
where the old-fashioned niche once held its place. 
But although they are found to exist in such quan- 
tities, neither books nor periodicals are allowed to 



3<5o MRS. MARGARET DELAND, 

become an annoyance by being left about to crowd 
out other things and to collect dust. The exquis- 
ite neatness and order that prevail speak volumes 
for the refinement and managerial capacity of the 
mistress of the house. An authoress is supposedly 
the least practical of persons ; and yet in this one 
instance an exception must be noted, for there are 
countless signs that the hand at the helm is both 
experienced and sure. 

Mrs. Deland is of Scottish ancestry on her 
father's side of the family, and, as a lineal descen- 
dant of John of Gaunt, may be said to have sprung 
from the house of Lancaster. There is about her 
something of the freedom and indomitable strength 
of the Highlands — a look in the clear blue eye, a 
warmth of coloring, a cut of features, and, above 
all, a certain unruly assertiveness of stray locks of 
hair — that awakens memories of the heather and 
of the wind upon the hills, coming heavily laden 
with the odor of peat and fresh from its contact 
with some neighboring loch. And, again, there 
are moments when other and quite different pic- 
tures suggest themselves, as the outcome of a 
still more subtle relation to the fragrant treas- 
ures of her garden — the delicate mignonette, the 
open-hearted June rose — with just a touch of 
passion in its veins to make it kin with all the 
world — and the sensitive convolvulus, lifting 
its face heavenward to greet the light, but 



MRS, MARGARET DELAND, 361 

robbed of aspirations when the shadows settle into 
gloom. 

The strong love of flowers finds its expression 
in a number of ways, and it seems extraordinary 
that a success which is seldom achieved by those 
who live in town should crown the efforts of one 
who apparently has but to touch a plant to make 
it live. A little fig-tree — the most notable of her 
triumphs, for it, too, was planted and raised within 
doors — lifts its branches and bears fruit as the 
central attraction of a group of tropical plants 
that flourish near the casement of the dining-room 
window. An India-rubber plant that is fast as- 
suming proportions which threaten its banishment, 
spreads its glossy leaves in the middle of the libra- 
ry, and, overladen as it is, one cannot fail to ob- 
serve that the broad ledge of the window in the 
rear was arranged with a special view to the well- 
being of the various blooms seen thereon, and thus 
given the full benefit of the sunshine. 

At the close of the winter Mrs. Deland has a 
sale of flowers in aid of some good cause, and also 
for the purpose of demonstrating that the cultiva- 
tion of such plants as are raised under her roof, 
with no other care than that given from out of her 
own busy life, might be made to serve many a gen- 
tlewoman of reduced circumstances as a means of 
support. During the weeks that precede the sale, 
the house is ablaze with daffodils, and one leaves 



$62 MRS. MARGARET DELAND, 

the snow and ice without, to enter on a scene more 
suggestive of Florida than of Massachusetts. 

A wide diversity of interests draws very differ- 
ent kinds of people under this roof, for the sympa- 
thies of those who live under it are of extensive 
range, and their hospitality is without limit. 
There are the purely social functions, placing in 
touch representative members of the world of 
fashion and those whose gifts or strong individual- 
ity have lifted them out of the more conventional 
lines of thought and action. Mr. Deland, as an 
authority on football and the inventor of strategic 
moves which have materially strengthened Har- 
vard's game, also gathers about him serious ama- 
teurs in outdoor sports, and is ever ready to pro- 
long the pleasures of the post-prandial cigar by 
enthusiastic discussion of moot points. 

Meetings in the interests of charitable organi- 
zations, civic matters, and all stirring questions of 
the day, make their demands on the time of a hos- 
tess whose tact and responsiveness are unfailing. 
When some interest of an exclusively feminine 
nature remains to be dealt with, or that bugbear of 
the male mind, a ladies' luncheon-party is in order, 
the genial host escapes to some such favorite haunt 
as the St. Botolph or the Tavern Club, leaving an 
almost startling substitute in the shape of a life- 
size portrait by the well-known Boston artist. Miss 
S. G. Putnam, to smile a welcome in his stead. 



MRS, MARGARET DELAND, Z^Z 

The portrait and the little bay-window first seen 
from the outside are the most conspicuous features 
of the upper salon. It is from this window that a 
view of the sunset and of the distant river may be 
enjoyed; and in looking up and down the street 
one cannot fail to observe the fine old mansions on 
the opposite side of the way, set back a consider- 
able distance from the street, and with enough 
ground round about them to include in their sur- 
roundings old-fashioned grass-plots and flowering 
shrubs belonging to the past century. In presid- 
ing at her table Mrs. Deland does the honors with 
cordial interest in those grouped about her, and 
while taking full part in the conversation, always 
contrives to draw out others, rather than to permit 
her individual views to be drawn upon. 

As one of the first to introduce the use of the 
chafing-dish, her experiments in this direction 
must be quoted as unique, not only because of 
their most excellent results, but in view of the 
fact that everything that has to be done is so dain- 
tily and gracefully accomplished. It is simply as- 
tonishing how she continues to hold her place in 
the general conversation, while quietly mixing and 
adding the ingredients out of which some particu- 
larly delicious //<2/ is to evolve. Everything has 
been measured out in advance and stands in readi- 
ness. This bit of Venetian glass, whose soft col- 
ors are intensified by the sunlight playing about 



364 MRS. MARGARET DELAND. 

it, holds just the proper quantity of cream; that 
small jug — an infinitesimal specimen of yellow pot- 
tery — contains but a spoonful of some dark liquid, 
as to whose mission the uninitiated may not guess. 
It is the very poetry of cooking, and it was hardly 
in the nature of a surprise when a guest whose 
travels had extended through the East gravely as- 
sured Mrs. Deland, on partaking of a preparation 
which had served as thQpike de resistance of the 
occasion, that its name as translated from the Per- 
sian could only be explained by the significant 
phrase, — ** The Sultan faints with delight " ! 

As an author Mrs. Deland fully recognizes the 
importance of systematizing her work, therefore 
she has long made it a custom to deny herself to 
every one during the morning hours in order to 
devote them exclusively to writing. The library, 
whose attraction has already been referred to, 
makes an ideal workshop, and as such deserves to 
rank as far and away the most interesting room in 
the house. It is usually flooded with sunshine, 
and is always light, the open fire contributing fur- 
ther brightness, and bringing into requisition a 
quaint pair of andirons, shaped in the form of two 
revolutionary soldiers standing on guard. 

The window, framing a sheet of glass that 
might well prove problematic to a less capable 
housekeeper, gives on the rear of several Chest- 
nut Street houses whose old roofs and old chim- 



MRS. MARGARET DELAND. 365 

neys reach nearly to its level and are directly out- 
side. A faint twittering tells of the presence of 
those gamins among birds, the sparrows, and a 
closer search for the little fellows reveals their 
bright eyes and ruffled feathers, as seen emerg- 
ing from the crevices into which they have con- 
trived to squeeze themselves in their search for 
shelter and warmth. 

There is space beyond, with only the shifting 
clouds to gaze upon, and the stillness and repose 
of the spot speak well for the writer's chances in 
regard to the maintenance of moods and consecu- 
tive thought. The ill-starred fortunes of " Philip 
and His Wife" were followed from amid these 
same peaceful surroundings, and the commodious 
desk near the window doubtless held manuscript 
sheets of that tale, as well as of others more re- 
cently written. A cast of Mr. Deland's hand is 
suspended from one side of the desk, and his 
share in the possession of the room is indicated by 
a central writing-table with telephone attachment. 
If he chances to look up while transacting such 
business as invades the home, he will meet with 
the gentle face of one of Lucca della Robia's an- 
gels, or his eyes may wander from this relief, and 
the mantelpiece against which it is placed, to a 
large photograph of Boston, and a number of well- 
selected pictures covering the walls. 

Mrs. Deland's first productions were in verse, 



$66 MRS. MARGARET DELAND. 

and an idea as to their spontaneity may be gath- 
ered from the fact that several of the poems which 
appeared under the title of *' In An Old Garden " 
were originally jotted down upon the leaves of a 
market-book, to be left in the hands of a friend 
whose sympathy and belief awakened the first 
sense of power, and to whom the volume was dedi- 
cated. One of these prosaic bits of ruled paper is 
still in existence. It bears the penciled words of 
" The Clover," and, by way of illustration, a grace- 
ful spray of the flower, suggestively traced over 
all, as if thrown upon the page. 

When the Delands first went to Kennebunk- 
port, it was a little fishing village of the most 
primitive kind, and life there, in the summer time, 
was refreshingly simple and unconstrained. A 
cottage was selected within a stone's throw of the 
river, and Mr. Deland's yacht, with its picturesque 
Venetian-red sails, became a feature of the scene. 
A disused barn, in a nook among the hills, was 
found to possess a charming outlook, and was im- 
mediately turned into a study. In this retreat 
" Sidney " was written. The glory of the garden 
proved a thing to be remembered, and its mistress 
was never happier than when delving among her 
treasures. Kennebunkport has grown into a pop- 
ular summer resort, with its hordes of transient 
visitors, its countless hotels and boarding-houses; 
but the Delands pass their days in much the same 



MRS. MARGARET DELAND. 3^7 

fashion as when the pleasures of the river and the 
charm of the surrounding country seemed to be- 
long to them alone. 

That our authoress still counts her garden the 
most fascinating spot on earth, may be gathered 
from her own words : — " I am rather fond of rising 
at five o'clock in the morning, and of going out to 
weed when every blade of grass and every leaf is 
beaded with dew ; and if the tide is high, and the 
sun comes shining over the hills on the wide blue 
river — weeding is an enchanting occupation." 

Lucia Purdy. 



F. MARION CRAWFORD 



369 



F. MARION CRAWFORD 

AT SORRENTO 

To most people who have travelled in the south 
of Italy the name of Sorrento recalls one of the 
loveliest places in the world, which has been so 
often and so well described that it forms part of 
the mental picture-gallery even of those who have 
never been there. We all seem to know the 
cheerful little town, perched high above the glori- 
ous bay, and crowded with tourists during more 
than half the year. On any bright morning, espe- 
cially in early spring, the tiny shops in the princi- 
pal street fairly swarm with strangers, to whom 
polite and polyglot dealers sell ornaments of tor- 
toise-shell and lava, silk sashes which will look 
like impressionist rainbows under sober English 
skies, and endless boxes and book-shelves of inlaid 
woods, destined to fall to pieces under the fiery 
breath of the American furnace. In contrast to 
these frivolous travellers one may also see the con- 
scientious Germans, whose long-saved pence are 
thriftily expended, seeking out every possible and 
impossible haunt of Tasso's ghost, with the aid of 
Baedeker, the apostle of modern travel. 

371 



372 F, MARION CRAWFORD. 



Comparatively few of this constantly changing 
company ever think of taking the side street which 
runs between the high-road to Castellamare and 
the sea, and it is possible to spend some time at 
Sorrento without having seen the home of Marion 
Crawford at all. Follow this side street, called 
the "rota," because it curves like the rim of a 
wheel, and you will find yourself presently going 
back toward Naples, shut in on either hand by the 
high walls of villas and gardens, over which the 
orange and lemon and olive trees look down into 
the dusty lane. Just across the boundary line be- 
tween Sorrento and the village of Sant' Agnello, 
named after a martial abbot who is said to have 
fought the Turks, as many a churchman did in his 
time, there stands a sedate old inn, the Cocumella, 
or Little Gourd, which is a complete contrast to 
the two great hotels in the larger town. It was 
once the property of the Jesuits, and the King 
Ferdinand of Naples who was Nelson's friend, no- 
bly generous with the belongings of others, after 
the manner of kings, gave it, with the adjoining 
church, to the forefather of its present owner. 
The house has been an inn ever since, but the title 
to the church has never been settled, and the 
building is kept in repair by the landlord as a sort 
of courtesy to Heaven. To this old-fashioned inn 
many Italians and quiet English families come for 
the season, and it was in a cave or grotto at the 



F. MARION CRAWFORD. 373 

foot of its garden, which slopes toward the cliff, 
whence there is a steep descent through the rocks 
to the sea, that Mr. Crawford wrote " To Leeward " 
and " Saracinesca," before he married and bought 
his present house. 

Beyond the Cocumella lies the parish of Sant' 
Agnello, a village quite independent of its more 
fashionable neighbor, with a post-office and a few 
little shops of its own. Keeping to the lane, at 
about an English mile from Sorrento, a quaint old 
Capuchin monastery is reached on the left, with a 
small church and a rambling almshouse just show- 
ing above a high white-washed wall, which runs on 
to a gateway of gray stone over which ivy hangs 
in masses, while on each side the name of the 
place, "Villa Crawford," is carved in plain block 
letters. The heavy dark-green doors of the gate 
stand hospitably open, and show the straight, nar- 
row drive, bordered with roses, geraniums, and jas- 
mine, and leading down to a square garden-court, 
not large but full of flowers and crooked old olive 
trees, over which wistaria has been trained from 
one to the other, so that in spring they are a mass 
of delicate bloom and fragrance. The house is 
very simple, built of rough stone partly stuccoed, 
as usual in that part of Italy, and irregular in 
shape because it has been added to from time to 
time. When Mr. Crawford took it for a season, 
soon after his marriage to a daughter of General 



374 F. MARION CRAWFORD. 

Berdan, it was in such a very tumble-down condi- 
tion that when the fierce winter gales swept over 
snow clad Vesuvius from the northeast, the teeth 
of every lock chattered and the carpets rose in bil- 
lows along the tiled floors. But the site is one of 
the most beautiful on the whole bay, for the house 
stands on the edge of a cliff which falls abruptly 
nearly two hundred feet to the water, and since 
Mr. Crawford bought it he has strengthened it 
with a solid tower which can be seen for some dis- 
tance out at sea. 

The front door opens directly upon a simple hall 
where there are plants in tubs, and a tall old mon- 
astery clock stands near the door leading to the 
stone staircase. The long drawing-room opens 
upon a tiled terrace, and is almost always full of 
sunshine, the scent of flowers, and the voices of 
children. It cannot be said to be furnished in the 
modern style, but it contains many objects which 
could only have been collected by people having 
both taste and opportunity. When in Constanti- 
nople, many years ago, Mr. Crawford was so fortu- 
nate as to find an unusually large quantity of the 
beautiful Rhodes embroidery formerly worked by 
the women of the Greek islands for the Knights of 
Malta, of which none has been made for over a 
hundred years. The pattern always consists of 
Maltese crosses, in every possible variety of de- 
sign, embroidered in dark -red silk on a coarse lin- 



F, MARION CRAWFORD, 37$ 

en ground which is entirely covered. Draped here 
and there the effect is exceedingly rich and soft, as 
well as striking, and some fine old Persian armor 
over the doors tells of a visit which the author and 
his wife made to the Caucasus during one of his 
rare holidays. A magnificent portrait of Mrs. 
Crawford by Lenbach, a gift from the artist to her 
husband, was painted during a winter spent at Mu- 
nich; and on the opposite wall hangs a brilliant 
water-color drawing of a Moorish warrior, by Vil- 
legas, presented by him to Mrs. Crawford after a 
visit to his studio in Rome. On a table placed 
against the back of an upright piano, among a 
number of more or less curious and valuable ob- 
jects, lies the large gold medal of the Prix Mon- 
binne, the only prize ever given by the French 
Academy to foreign men-of- letters, which was 
awarded to Mr. Crawford for the French editions 
of "Zoroaster" and "Marzio's Crucifix." 

A door leads from one end of the drawing-room 
into the library, a high square room completely 
lined with old carved bookcases of black walnut, 
built more than two hundred years ago for Cardi- 
nal Altieri before he became Pope Clement the 
Tenth, and of which the wanderings, down to their 
final sale, would be an interesting bit of Roman 
social history. The library is not a workroom, but 
the place where the author's books are kept in 
careful order, those he needs at any time being 



37^ F, MARION CRAWFORD, 

carried up to his study and brought down again 
when no longer wanted. There are about five 
thousand volumes, very largely books of reference 
and classics, partly collected by the author him- 
self, and in part inherited from his uncle, the late 
Samuel Ward, and his father-in-law. General Ber- 
dan. The room is so full that one large bookcase 
has been placed in the middle, so that both sides 
of it are used. Besides the books the library con- 
tains only a writing-table, three or four chairs, and 
a bronze bust of Mr. Ward. 

But it is hard to think of these rooms without 
their inmates — the father, who is at his best, as 
he certainly is at his happiest, in his own house, 
the beautiful and gracious mother, and the four 
strikingly handsome children, with their healthy 
simplicity and unconsciousness which speak of that 
ideal home life which is the author's highest for- 
tune. The eldest child is a girl of twelve, ** as 
fair as wheat," with thoughtful eyes; next comes 
a boy two years younger, much darker in coloring, 
and with a face already full of expression; and 
last a pair of twins of eight, a boy and a girl — she 
with a nimbus of curly golden hair that makes her 
look like a saint by Fra Angelico, and he a singu- 
larly grave and sturdy little fellow, whose present 
energies are bent on being a sailor-man — a dispo- 
sition which he gains fairly, for Mr. Crawford's 
friends know that if he might have consulted only 



F, MARION CRAWFORD, 377 

the natural bent of his mind, he would have fol- 
lowed the sea as his profession. From early boy- 
hood he has passed the happiest hours of his lei- 
sure on board a boat, and he is as proficient in the 
management of the picturesque but dangerous fel- 
luca as any native skipper along the coast. 

When he bought an old New York pilot-boat, 
in 1896, he was admitted to the examination of 
the Association of American Ship-masters in con- 
sideration of jhis long experience, and he holds a 
proper ship-master's certificate authorizing him to 
navigate sailing-vessels on the high seas. He 
proved his ability by navigating his little schooner 
across the Atlantic with entire success, and with- 
out the slightest assistance from the mate he took 
with him. This episode in a life which has had 
more variety than falls to the lot of most men 
shows clearly the predominant trait of Marion 
Crawford's character, which is determination to 
follow out anything he undertakes until he knows 
how it should be done, even if he has not the time 
to work at it much afterward. Readers of " Casa 
Braccio " may have noticed that the old cobbler 
who is Paul Griggs's friend is described with 
touches which show acquaintance with his trade, 
the fact being that while the author was preparing 
for college in the English village which he de- 
scribes later in "A Tale of a Lonely Parish," he 
made a pair of shoes " to see how it was done," as 



378 F. MARION CRA WFORD. 

he also joined the local bell-ringers to become 
familiar with the somewhat complicated system of 
peals and chimes. Mere curiosity is like the 
clutch of a child's hand, which usually means 
nothing, and may break what it seizes, but the in- 
satiable thirst for knowledge of all kinds is entirely 
different, and has always formed part of the true 
artistic temperament. 

The description of silver chiselling in " Marzio's 
Crucifix " is the result of actual experience, for 
Mr. Crawford once studied this branch of art, and 
produced several objects of considerable promise. 
In rebuilding and adding to his house he has never 
employed an architect, for he is a good practical 
builder and stone-mason, as well as a creditable 
mathematician, and his foreman in all such work 
is a clever laborer who can neither read nor write. 
Like many left-handed men, he is skilful in the 
use of tools, and his mechanical capacity was tested 
recently when, having taken out a complete sys- 
tem of American plumbing, including a kitchen 
boiler, he could find no workmen who understood 
such appliances, and so put them all in himself, 
with the help of two or three plumbers whose 
knowledge did not extend beyond soldering a joint. 
When the job was done everything worked per- 
fectly, to his justifiable satisfaction. As he is a 
very fair classical scholar and an excellent linguist, 
he could easily support himself as a tutor if it 



F. MARION CRAWFORD, 379 

were necessary, or he might even attain to the 
awful dignity of a high-class courier. 

His study or workroom at Villa Crawford is on 
the top of the house, by the tower, and opens upon 
a flat roof, after the Italian fashion. There are 
windows on three sides, as it is often important to 
be able to shut out the sun without losing too 
much light; the walls are simply white-washed, 
and the floor is of green and white tiles. In the 
middle there is a very large table, with a shelf at 
the back on which stand in a row a number of en- 
gravings and etchings, most of which were given 
him by his wife, prominent among them being 
"The Knight, Death, and the Devil," by Durer, 
mentioned in the beginning of " A Rose of Yes- 
terday." A small revolving bookcase full of 
books of reference has its place close to his hand, 
and his writing chair is of the most ordinary 
American pattern. The large plain brick fireplace 
projects into the room, and on the broad mantel- 
shelf stands a replica of his father Thomas Craw- 
ford's Peri, a winged figure, fully draped, gazing 
sadly toward the forfeited paradise. On one wall 
hangs an engraving by Van Dalen after a portrait 
of Giorgione by Titian, of which the original has 
been destroyed, and on another a large photograph 
of Giorgione's Knight of Malta, and small ones of 
his pilot-schooner as she looked when he crossed 
the ocean in her, and as she appears now, trans- 



3So F. MARION CRAWFORD. 

formed into the yacht Alda, and refitted so that 
his wife and children may accompany him on the 
cruises which form his usual vacations. The 
effect of the room as a whole is severe and simple, 
but the view from its windows is most beautiful 
and varied. To the south lie olive-clad hills, with 
white houses dotted here and there among orange- 
groves, and with the craggy mass of Monte Sant' 
Angelo, rising higher than Vesuvius itself, for a 
background; westward one looks over Sant' Ag- 
nello and the neighboring townships, and to the 
northeast, across the shining bay, the curved white 
line of Naples stretches far along the shore, while 
Vesuvius broods fatefully over the villages at its 
feet. 

Mr. Crawford is an early riser, being usually at 
his writing-table between six and seven o'clock. 
If it is winter he lights his own fire, and in any 
season begins the day, like most people who have 
lived much in southern countries, with a small cup 
of black coffee and a pipe. About nine o'clock he 
goes down-stairs to spend an hour with his wife 
and children, and then returns to his study and 
works uninterruptedly until luncheon, which in 
summer is an early dinner. In warm weather the 
household goes to sleep immediately after this 
meal, to re-assemble toward five o'clock; but the 
author often works straight through this time, 
always, however, giving the late afternoon and 



F, MARION CRA WFORD. 381 

evening to his family. The common impression 
that the south of Italy is unbearably hot in sum- 
mer is due to the fact that the guide-books in gen- 
eral use are written by Germans or Englishmen, 
whose blood boils at what seems to us a very tole- 
rable temperature. Inland cities like Milan and 
Florence often suffer from oppressive heat, but 
records show that neither at Naples nor at Palermo 
does the thermometer mark so high as in New 
York, and at Sorrento it rarely goes above 84°. 
On Sundays, after early church, parents and chil- 
dren go off in a boat to some one of the many 
lovely spots which are to be found among the rocks 
along the shore, taking with them fire-wood, a ket- 
tle, and all that is necessary for a " macaronata," 
or macaroni picnic. The sailors do the cooking, 
while the children look on or go in swimming with 
their father, and when the simple feast is over the 
rest of the afternoon is spent in sailing over the 
bay, perhaps as far as Capri if the breeze holds. 

While every one acknowledges Marion Craw- 
ford's talent as a story-teller, he is sometimes re- 
proached with inventing impossible situations, or 
at least straining probability, which is only anoth- 
er illustration of the old saying about fact and fic- 
tion, for in each of the cases usually referred to 
he has set down what actually happened. The 
triple tragedy in " Greifenstein " was a terrible 
fact in a noble German family before the middle 



382 F. MARION CRAWFORD. 

of the present century, and the son of the house, 
the last of his race, entered the Church and died a 
Cardinal. In " Casa Braccio," the elopement of 
the nun and the burning of the substituted body- 
took place in South America exactly as described, 
and the story was told to the author by a person 
who had met the real Gloria. The incident of 
Don Teodoro in *'Taquisara," who, although not 
ordained, acted as a priest for many years, occurred 
in the neighborhood of Rome, and there have been 
two well-known cases in which priests kept the 
secret of the confessional as Don Ippolito does in 
"Corleone," but with the difference that they 
were both convicted of crimes which they had not 
committed, one being sent to the mines of Siberia, 
the other to a French penal colony. 

The impression, quite generally entertained, 
that Mr. Crawford throws off one book after an- 
other as fast as he can write them down, is based 
upon a misapprehension of his method of working. 
For months, or even for several years, a subject 
is constantly in his mind, and he spares no study 
to improve his rendering of it. Travellers in 
Arabia, for instance, have commended the " local 
color" of his "Khaled," which, however, is quite 
as much due to patient reading as to imagination, 
for he has never been there. The actual writing 
of his stories is done quickly, partly because few 
authors have had such large experience of all the 



F, MARION CRAWFORD. 383 

mechanical work connected with literature. From 
early manhood he has been entirely dependent on 
his own resources, and during his two years' edi- 
torship of an Indian newspaper he practically 
wrote it all every day, correcting the proof into 
the bargain. After his return to America, and 
before writing " Mr. Isaacs," he supported himself 
by any literary work that he could get, during 
which time, by the way, he was a frequent con- 
tributor to The Critic. The man so often called 
"a born story-teller" is also a careful student, 
especially reverent of the precious inheritance of 
our language, and some of his works are now used 
as class-books for the study of modern English lit- 
erature throughout this country, a fact which may 
easily escape the knowledge of the novel-reading 
public which owes him so much pleasure. 

Mr. Crawford has made a success at play- writ- 
ing as well as at novel writing. His " In the Pal- 
ace of the King," which has been played so suc- 
cessfully by Miss Viola Allen, was a play before 
he turned it into a novel, and he has recently writ- 
ten a drama founded on a new version of the story 
of Francesca and Paola, which Madame Sarah 
Bernhardt has produced with great success. 

William Bond. 



PAUL LEICESTER FORD 



38s 



PAUL LEICESTER FORD 

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS AND THE MAN OF LETTERS 

Long-suffering prominence, among its numer- 
ous woes, has at times to subject itself to snap-shot 
portraiture ; but occasionally a friendly and ama- 
teurish zeal, seeking honest results, brings the per- 
son of note to the advantage of a long exposure, 
and then perchance educes finenesses and perso- 
nalities neglected by the swifter method. I should 
like, if I may, to use the slower and truer means 
in a sketch of Mr. Paul Leicester Ford, who has 
of late, by reason of an unquestioned reputation, 
been compelled to stand from behind the vanguard 
of his books and show himself as a notability. In 
contrast therefore to various pen views which have 
presented Mr. Ford as all sorts and conditions of a 
man, it ought to be possible for a friendly candor 
to delineate his life and purposes without passing 
just limitations. Paraphrasing his own playfully 
bold title, I seek to portray " The True Mr. Ford," 
entertaining the while that proportionate sense of 
demerit which I am sure restrained him as he 
limned the outlines of Washington. 

The accrediting of unusual ability to heredity 

387 



388 PAUL LEICESTER FORD. 

and environment alone fails to satisfy ; for what 
we most wish to understand is the actual and not 
the probable resultant. Nevertheless it will never 
do to omit from the reckoning Mr. Ford's innate 
tendencies and the slowly formed impulses made 
upon him and upon his equally remarkable brother, 
Worthington Chauncey Ford, by their father's 
superb library, of which in a manner, but in a dif- 
ferent degree, each is the incarnation. Puritan 
stock, absolutely pure, except where there is a 
crossing of the Huguenot on the paternal side — 
there is no choicer graft than that — a temperament 
stimulated by the nervous excitations of the cos- 
mopolitan life of New York, and a scholarship 
sound yet unacademic and not held by the leash of 
college traditions — these, as I see them, are the 
factors, any of which taken from him would have 
made Mr. Ford quite other than he is. Yet the 
aggregate of such components most assuredly does 
not constitute his genius; for genius as distin- 
guished from marked ability he undoubtedly pos- 
sesses. It has before now been told that on his 
mother's side he is the grandson of Professor Fow- 
ler of Amherst, the great-grandson of Noah Web- 
ster, and the grandson four times removed of Pres- 
ident Charles Chauncey of Harvard College, and 
of Governor Bradford; and from this last worthy 
ancestor he comes honestly by his fondness for a 
manuscript. This is good blood to run through 



PAUL LEICESTER FORD. 389 

one's veins, even in a remote generation. There 
is an added vigor from his mother, who, early ex- 
panded under favoring influences, had the native 
mental strength and moral sureness of a cultivated 
New Engand woman. His father, the late Gordon 
L. Ford, though known and honored as a success- 
ful lawyer and man of affairs, was, to those who 
had the closer knowledge of him, an idealist of the 
type which does not readily pursue other than the 
highest ends, and which cannot throw open the 
reserves of its nature. 

There is then in his make-up a curious balance 
of conservative tendencies and a due share of re- 
monstrance and even of headlong radicalism. To 
a superb mental equipment is to be added a phys- 
ical constitution strong enough to have pulled him 
through an infancy and childhood full of peril and 
no doubt of suffering, and to have landed him in 
manhood's estate with a vivacious and courageous 
disposition, a master of his fate. He is also en- 
dowed with an almost superhuman capacity for 
work. It may be that, conscious of hidden frail- 
ties of tenure, the impulse is within him to burn 
his candle of life fiercely ; btit I am disposed the 
rather to think that in his case this use of energy 
is mainly a question of superior " horse power " — 
he is able to work more than most of us, and there- 
fore he does. But great capacity does not always 
so express itself; and it would be unjust, unless 



39° PAUL LEICESTER FORD, 

one chose to regard Mr. Ford as precocious in 
youth and phenomenal at all times, not to recog- 
nize that the fate which distributes gifts to mor- 
tals gave him Opportunity. Free, if he so wished, 
to follow his own devices and to take the joys of 
life without undue exertion, he was wise enough, 
at an age when most youth sows an unprofitable 
crop on stony ground, to plant in the fertile fur- 
rows which a farseeing father had sedulously made 
ready for him. As for education and the disci- 
pline of school life, so wholesome for the most of 
us, there was for him literally none of it. His 
nursery, his primary school, and his college all 
may be found within the four walls of his father's 
library. The books held within the quiet resi- 
dence in Clark Street, Brooklyn, must now be 
nearer 100,000 than 50,000 in number. They fill 
all parts of the large house fashioned in the man- 
ner of fifty years ago, but their headquarters are in 
the library proper, a room at the rear, over fifty 
feet square, and reached from the main floor by a 
short flight of steps. This room is well but not 
glaringly lighted by a lantern at the top, while the 
sides, with the exception of a few small windows 
of no great utility owing to the tallness of sur- 
rounding buildings, are fully taken up with books 
to the height of eight feet. The floor is covered 
in part by large rugs ; the walls and ceilings are 
of serious tint; a fireplace is opposite the en- 



PAUL LEICESTER FORD. 391 

trance; while sofas of most dissimilar pattern and 
meant seemingly to hold any burden but a human 
one, are placed "disposedly" about; chairs, easy 
but not seductive, are in plenty, but like the sofas 
give notice that here is a government not of men 
but of books — here there is no library built for the 
lust of the flesh and pride of the eye, but for books 
and for those who use them. I cannot suppose 
that those smitten of bibliophily would thrill over 
the Ford library, since it exists for the practical 
and virile, although it is, in parts, exceedingly 
choice. Roughly classified to suit the easy memo- 
ries of the owners, it presents an appearance ur- 
bane and unprecise rather than military and com- 
manding. At irregular intervals loom huge masses 
of books, pamphlets, papers, proof-sheets, and en- 
gravings in cataclysmic disorder and apparently 
suspended in mid-air like the coffin of the False 
Prophet, but in fact resting on tables well hidden 
by the superincumbent piles. In this room the 
father slowly accumulated this priceless treasure 
mostly illustrative of American history and its 
adjuncts, thereby gratifying his own accurate 
tastes and hoping, as we may suppose, that his 
children would ultimately profit by his foresight. 
Nor was he disappointed; for the two brothers, 
Paul and Worthington, drew their milk, histori- 
cally speaking, from this exhaustless fount, and it 
is thus impossible to disconnect the labors and 



392 PAUL LEICESTER FORD. 

successes of these two unusual men from their 
association with this library. Not in books alone, 
but in many choice autograph letters, rare por- 
traits and plates, and much unpublished material 
consists the value of the collection. 

One who did not know Mr. Ford, on entering 
the room and beholding for the first time the Sier- 
ras of books, fronted by foot-hills and drumlins of 
unfinished work, sale catalogues, letters, and other 
detritus, might well suppose him to be the most 
careless of mortals. This would be to misjudge; 
for though no one else could fathom his methods, 
Mr. Ford turns readily to what he wants, and 
given the right haystack, finds his needle with 
astonishing ease. Like many another man of 
ability, he does not enslave himself to organiza- 
tion, but uses method only in proportion to direct 
needs. 

The secret of his astonishing capacity for work 
and production is not far to seek. He is by na- 
ture and by predilection a man of affairs and of 
business. The accident of life has directed his 
energies toward books and letters. But he is not 
a literary man in the sense that he is to be identi- 
fied with a class, for in the best sense he is d^- 
class^. So far as there may be genius burning 
within him, it must express itself during moments 
of inspiration ; but the between-times are not spent 
in dreams or vain imaginings, but in an almost re- 



PAUL LEICESTER FORD. 393 

lentless absorption in some historical or editorial 
task, requiring fidelity and energy rather than fit- 
ful moods. 

I do not now discern what at one time I feared 
that I might— carelessness, or an effect of haste, 
in the large mass of results to which this author 
has already put his name. On the contrary it 
seems to me that more and more he tends toward 
painstaking care, and there is good reason to pre- 
dict that his best and possibly most brilliant work 
is yet to come. Regarding one work, since pub- 
lished, he has told me that, having already pushed 
a long way toward the end and finding that the 
affair went slowly, of a sudden it was borne in 
upon him that he was on the wrong track. In a 
moment he swept 30,000 words of manuscript into 
his basket and started anew and with a good heart. 
A great organizing capacity, a power of maintained 
effort, and a willingness to take unstinted trouble, 
render the large volume of his achievements as 
acceptable as the small bulk of another's work. 
Faults I think Mr. Ford has had, and still has, 
but it would be proper even for the nicest criti- 
cism to discover a sure advance in the quality of 
his style. Personally I have never been able to 
explain satisfactorily the success of his most pop- 
ular book, " The Honorable Peter Stirling." It is 
almost without a "literary" quip or term or 
phrase; the politics present a stiff dose to novel 



394 PAUL LEICESTER FORD. 

readers, a class too satiated with an unvarying diet 
not to crave spicier viands than those served to 
them by the love motive of Mr. Ford's story. 
Why then has this proved to be one of the three 
stories of the past two years and more ? I do not 
know, unless it be that Mr. Ford, who is no ego- 
tist and not exclusive in his sympathies, reflects in 
this book a genuine if unsentimental faith in hu- 
man nature of every degree. To such a faith hu- 
manity is always responsive. He did not come 
crying in the wilderness with acrimony and fanati- 
cism, but gave the prototype of a gentleman of the 
heart and not of long ancestry — a pure man in all 
things, even in metropolitan politics, who stamped 
on evil, not shrank from it. There was a cry for 
a politician who could be something to the " boys " 
besides a prig, and Mr. Ford, haud inexpertuSy 
produced him. It was bread and not a stone, and 
the democracy, rampant yet not unclean, heard him 
gladly. 

I have no purpose here to rehearse the merits 
of Mr. Ford's various writings. Current criticism 
certainly has him in its eye as a conspicuous fig- 
ure, and if he meets opposition he is not likely to 
suffer neglect. Meanwhile another source of his 
success and of his popularity seems to me to lie 
in his perfect intellectual and moral normality. 
Great as is the volume of his work, it is sound 
throughout. He strikes no shrill or wayward 



PAUL LEICESTER FORD, 395 

note; the social order is always considered. He 
deals with the sound fruit of human life, and as- 
sumes that good nature, honest love, money- mak- 
ing, clean and enjoyable existence are not only 
possibilities but everyday realities. The success 
of "The Story of an Untold Love" shows how 
ready people are for an observance of all the com- 
mandments rather than for a breach of one. It is 
with novels as with plays — cleanliness " goes. " 

Mr. Ford's large abilities, aided by fortunate in- 
heritance, have been used not for the ends of mere 
scholarship and to humor preciosity and a love of 
what is fantastic and occasional, but to recognize 
common wants and aspirations; yet at the same 
time he evinces an idealism tempered by no little 
terrestrial wisdom and experience. Imagination 
plays a larger part in his work — and I am here 
speaking of his creative work — than appears at 
first sight. In " Peter Stirling " he has managed 
to give to an immense metropolitan life an effect 
of homogeneity and interrelation. The large and 
evanescent effects of a great city are tempting 
themes, but those who try to catch and hold the 
impression for the uses of a novel seldom succeed 
in giving more than fine details. Our genre paint- 
ers of fiction have been admirable in this matter : 
but to make one pattern of the huge confusion re- 
quires a knowledge vouchsafed only to him who 
has acquired by daily contact the largest and most 



39^ PAUL LEICESTER FORD. 

vital experiences. The immensity of financial 
transactions, the intricate shrewdness of politi- 
cians, aside from their corruptions, the nice 
checks and balances of a higher social life must 
necessarily escape the eye of the literary artist 
mainly because they lie beyond his ken. 

Cerebrally Mr. Ford is muciparous. He can 
be busy with a play, a story, a biography, and with 
editing some historical work during the same in- 
terval of time — the real marvel of it all being that, 
when these come to publication, the world, which 
is said to know clearly what it wants, accepts the 
results with apparent satisfaction. The power of 
driving a quadriga of new books around the popu- 
lar arena amid no little applause, is due, I think, 
to qualities not inherent in the literary mind as 
such, but implying a wider mental grasp. 

A spirit of restlessness takes hold upon Mr. 
Ford when he is hardest at work, and he shifts at 
pleasure from one to another of his several desks 
or tables. I should imagine that the curiosity 
hunter of the future, who might wish to possess 
the desk at which or the chair on which the author 
of " Peter Stirling " sat when he penned that book, 
might comfortably fill a storage-warehouse van 
with his new-found joys. Like most good fellows 
who write, Mr. Ford knows the value of the night 
and often works to best advantage when honest 
folk have been long abed. It is a pleasure to 



PAUL LEICESTER FORD, 397 

think of the occasionally fortunate person who 
writes when he wants to, not when he must, though 
I do not think it would be difficult for so con- 
scientious a worker as Mr. Ford to get up friction 
at shortest notice and as occasion might require. 

While it has been my purpose to refrain scrupu- 
lously from ministering to that curiosity which 
cares less for the essential qualities, and the intel- 
lectual methods of a character prominently before 
the world, than for intrusive detail concerning per- 
sonal caprices of taste and modes of living, I shall 
not be content if I do not say that as a personality 
Mr. Ford is as extraordinary as in his achievement. 
He is alive to every issue of the day and of the 
hour. He is brilliant at conversation, and per- 
haps even more brilliant at controversy, for I can 
imagine no opposing argument so bristling with 
facts as to prevent his making a cavalry charge on 
a whole table of unsympathetic hearers. Life is 
at its keenest pitch when one is privileged to hear 
his urgent voice, with no little command withal in 
its notes, and to see the invincible clearness and 
dominance in his black-brown eyes. 

This spirit of fearlessness, chastened as it is by 
an attitude of real toleration and open-mindedness, 
colors Mr. Ford's personal sympathies. Believing 
as he does that every man must eventually work 
out his own salvation and that present well-being 
may justly be sacrificed to future growth, it would 



39^ PAUL LEICESTER FORD. 

be impossible for him to choose any channel for 
the expression of his personal loyalty other than 
that which should strengthen and develop. It is 
no strange thing, then, that those who seek his aid 
and counsel find him most helpful through a power 
of stimulation which enhances instead of detracts 
from the sense of self-reliance. 

Lindsay Swift. 



[Since the foregoing was written, Mr. Paul 
Leicester Ford has died, being shot through the 
heart by his brother Malcolm, who it is only 
charitable to believe was temporarily insane. Mr. 
Ford had his best years before him. He recently 
married, moved into a fine house built to suit his 
own needs near Central Park, and his plans were 
mapped out years in advance. He was engaged 
on a novel at the time of his death, but had done 
so little on it that there is no possibility of its 
ever seeing the light of print. — Editors.] 



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